|
|
|
 |
|
|
Senior Alvin Pilot Dudley Foster communicates observations to scientists aboard the Atlantis while exploring thousands of meters below the surface.
|
|
|
Education
Read a description of each lesson plan and/or download them to your computer.
The Alaska Seamount Expedition brings together, scientists from many universities and research institutions to study several unexplored seamounts in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) and try to understand how they formed and to determine their volcanic history. They will also characterize these unique habitats and explore the diverse communities of organisms such as fish and invertebrates that exist around these undersea mountains.
This expedition provides a wonderful opportunity to inform and excite the general public, as well as the scientific community, about unique and unexplored regions of the deep ocean environment. Undergraduate and graduate students will benefit through post-cruise presentations by cruise participants at their respective institutions. An undergraduate student from the University of Alaska’s Marine Sciences Alaska Native and Minority Student Internship/Mentoring Program will participate in the cruise, as will a K-12 educator. The student and teacher will assist with the collection of material for the NOAA Ocean Explorer Web site, through which the general public will be able to follow the expedition. A team of professional videographers will be present throughout the cruise with the goal of developing an expedition video. This cruise will also provide an educational platform for the North Pacific Fisheries Observer Training Center, as one observer trainer will join the cruise, as will their new Director, Peter Risse. There is also potential for an Observer Training video to be developed from the footage collected during the Alvin dives.
Classroom teachers working with NOAA during May 2002 developed a series of lesson plans for students in Grades 5 – 12 that are specifically tied to the Alaska Seamount Expedition. These lesson plans focus on cutting-edge ocean exploration and research, using state-of-the-art technology, aboard one of the nation’s most sophisticated research vessels, the R/V Atlantis and its submersible Alvin, which are owned and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. The lesson plans focus specific all on the importance of ocean exploration and the research taking place during the Alaska Seamount Expedition, and feature such topics as how seamounts form, how depth effects biological communities, and what deep water corals can tell us about long term patterns of climate change.
The lesson plans are grouped into the following categories:
Grades 5-6
Grades 7-8
Grades 9-12 (chemical, biological, earth, and physical science).
Each grade-level grouping includes one activity that introduces students to ocean exploration in general, and additional activities that focus on the exploration and research being conducted as part of the Alaska Seamount Expedition. In addition to being tied to the National Science Education Standards, the hands-on, inquiry-based activities include focus questions, background information for teachers, links to interesting Internet sites, and extensions. Another significant component for each activity is a section that includes adaptations for deaf students. Web logs that document the latest discoveries and complement the lesson plans, complete with compelling images and video, will be sent back each day from sea. Teachers are encouraged to use the daily logs from the Alaska Seamount Expedition, which are posted on this site, to supplement the lesson plans.
(top)
|
