[Download the Flash file]
In 2004, ocean educators from across the country gathered to discuss ways to increase the awareness and knowledge of the general public concerning ocean issues. In essence, they asked the question “what does it mean to be ocean literate?” As a result of this workshop, the Ocean Literacy Initiative was born. Over the next few years, teams of scientists and educators developed a list of “seven essential principles” that everyone should know about the ocean. This effort has helped ocean educators focus their message and concentrate on way to engender a basic level of ocean understanding among all audiences.
Last year, a group of participants in COSEE Networked Ocean world (including scientists, classroom educators and designers) decided to collaborate on developing an interactive module to highlight the essential principles. The above interactive represents the public beta of this new Ocean Literacy Interactive.
Please provide us with your feedback so we can improve this interactive in future version. If you use this in a presentation or a classroom, we would also like to know how you used it and how it was received.
Development Team
Story: Paul Jivoff (associate professor)
Script: Laura Dunbar (middle school teacher)
Design/Animation: Brian Yan & Jon Pucci (students)
Editing: Corinne Dalelio (graduate assistant)
Produced by Janice McDonnell & Sage Lichtenwalner for COSEE NOW
Congratulations for the animation.
Have you thought about translating the presentation to spanish?
Last weekend we celebrated in Chile the V Meeting of Young Water Explorers which focused on the 7 Ocean Principles. This is a new experience in our country. I would be happy to help translating your animation.
luispinto2000@hotmail.com
voluntarioscopas.blogspot.com
Hi Luis – I would love to talk with you about translating this to Spanish. I am working starting in January 2009 with a group of latino students and their families here in New Brunswick, NJ. It would be wonderful to have this in Spanish. Please let me know how to engage you in helping with this.
Thanks!
Janice
I have been exploring your site and have found some interesting things – including this one. You might want to look at your information about the blue fin tuna – one of the amazing things about this fish is how big it can get. In the ocean zones section I think you have confused feet with meters – you have them as 3ft long and they can be over 3m in length.
Jan Hodder
I like the interactives and think they are great ways to share the main features of the ocean literacy work. I do have one comment I would like to discuss regarding the “Ocean makes the Earth habitable” interactive. I notice that it is not closely tied to the actual ocean literacy principles and fundamental concepts as described in the Ocean Literacy brochure and the scope and sequence work. Of course, you may have done it that way on purpose since intuitively it does seem like that principle should include how the ocean provides food, water, maintains temperature from getting too extreme etc to make Earth habitable. However, the principle actually only addresses how life evolved in the ocean and how the ocean provides oxygen. We have had this discussion arise several times during reviews of the scope and sequence and have come to a consensus for the scope and sequence work that we will only include the actual concepts as listed in this principle – the other concepts (food, temperature, currents etc) are described more fully in the other principles. I think it would be really great if your interactives also addressed oxygen and evolution in the ocean – they are difficult concepts which could benefit from your expertise doing interactives. The co-exploration website has the latest scope and sequences which detail out this principle. Thanks so much for all this great work and interested to discuss this more with you. Catherine Halversen
HI Catherine – You make a great point. It just so happens, Liberty Science Center is leading a discussion and workgroup to explore improving the discussion of evolution in general here in NJ schools. We will take that opportunity to work on improving the concept of oxygen evolution in the ocean. It is a more difficult discussion in schools and we will be taking the time to develop this material over the next year. Please let us know if there is someone working on similar materials that we can collaborate with on this effort. Thanks again for your thoughts and great comments.
Hi Catherine ~ you’re exactly right about how we approached the information for “Ocean makes the Earth habitable.” We feel it’s important for a teacher using this on an interactive white-board to be able to easily make connections to many of the ways the ocean makes the Earth habitable. So we kept it based from one central page in an effort to help increase the students’ understanding. I’m really happy to hear that you like the interactives.
I’m coming late to this party, but I just found this interactive. I like it overall. One quibble is with part 2 of the Ocean Makes Earth Habitable. Within that piece, there is a table on the Top 4 Sources of Water and the first one says “oceans” (plural) when the first principle says “only one ocean”. Might be good to have the internal text consistent with that principle.
Thanks Sarah – We will certainly fix that slip. Thanks for catching it.
Is this suppose to have audio accompaniment? The visuals are appealing.
Hi Deborah, no audio yet. Hopefully someone who’s interested in expanding and upgrading the interactive will consider adding some in a future version.
It says I can download the flash file, and I did, but how do I save it to my hard drive? I want to use it in class and don’t want to be dependent on the Internet.
If you right-click on the link underneath the interactive above, you can choose “Download Linked File As…” or “Save Link As…” or something like that (which depends on your browser).
Then, once you have the file on your machine, I find that you can often just drag the file over your web browser window to view it. (I know in Safari, sometimes you have to drag it over the address bar to get it to work.) You could also try File->Open in your browser.
Hope this helps!
Aloha and thank you for offering this comprehensive yet user-friendly and simple interactive. I’m just finding this now. Noticed a teeny tiny typo (?) under Sylvia Earle 1979, the text states “marine scientists Sylvia Earle…”. Delete the plural?
One question and a suggestion: regarding Ocean Literacy, how will the presenter or the participant assess his/her level of understanding? How do you know what has been learned? If you are interested in developing assessments or opportunities for students to demonstrate what they have learned, I would be happy to collaborate with you to integrate this presentation with my “Everyone Can Write About….” curriculum which is proven to increase mastery test scores for written expression. As we know, high stakes tests (including science) often have a written component, but there are no national standards for writing. States’ standards differ. ECWA is a flexible, easy, fun and proven method.