Welcome to 2011

It’s a new year, and there’s a lot to get excited about NOW.

Ross Sea Connection

This month, COSEE NOW partner scientist Dr. Josh Kohut will be leading a research cruise to the Ross Sea. And we’re thrilled that he’s included Chris Linder, a renowned environmental photographer, and Hugh Powell, an experienced science writer, on the mission. Hugh and Chris will send a short story and photo essay each day of the cruise that will be posted to the COSEE NOW site. We encourage everyone to follow along, especially teachers and their students. The pictures are sure to be stunning, and you won’t want to miss the cool stories too.

Ocean Gazing is 50

This month, COSEE NOW also marks another milestone, as the 50th episode of the Ocean Gazing podcast has been posted. For the last two years, we have been posting a new episode every two weeks. But for now we’re going to hold off on creating new episodes, so we can shift our efforts towards distributing these first 50 episodes in K-12 and college classrooms, on public radio stations, and in other podcasts. We’re also going to revamp the Ocean Gazing website to make it easier to search for episodes and to find accompanying lesson plans. If you have any lesson ideas, please let us know.

Late last year, the full COSEE NOW team met to plan our program for 2011. We have a number of online and face-to-face programs in the works for scientists, informal educators and classroom teachers, so stay tuned to the events page.

Finally, don’t forget to check out the full list of workgroups to find a community you would like to participate in this year. Now that’s a New Year’s resolution you can keep.

Ocean Acidification

By Sage Lichtenwalner

COSEE NOW is pleased to present “A plague in air and sea: Neutralizing the acid of progress,” a profile of biological oceanographer Debora Inglesias-Rodriguez, and her work studdying the consequences of ocean acidification. A comprehensive lesson plan is also provided, that leads students through an exploration of the relationship between carbon dioxide and acidification.

Ships, Ocean, and Satellites (S.O.S.)

By Kate Florio

This lesson introduces students to sea surface temperature data, as well as the concept of spatial resolution. Students work in groups to collect a limited number of “sea surface temperatures” from a simulated ocean. They discover patterns of sea surface temperature, along with challenges related to spatial resolution. Throughout the lesson, students are asked to collect and interpret data from their activity boards and from real time sources.

Helpdesk: What is RSS?

RSS is a great way to stay up to date with what’s happening on the COSEE NOW web site. Basically, RSS is a feed which you subscribe to using your favorite browser (like Safari or Firefox), a web site (like Google Reader) or one of the many RSS apps that are out there. With RSS, you never have to go to a web site to find out if something new has been posted. Your feed reader will tell you automatically when there’s something you’ll want to check out.

To subscribe to everything that’s happening on the NOW site, you’ll find a link on the main activity page. If you are logged in, you can also choose the My Friends or My Groups tabs where you will see RSS feeds for just those notices.

And of course, you can also find RSS links on the home pages of individual workgroups or blogs, if keeping thing simple is more your style.

Have a question for a future issue, send an email to help@coseenow.net