Videos Transcripts NOAA OE Lesson Plans Partners Research/Literature Discussions

Welcome to Ocean Sciences Teaching Videos

This project has been developed by the College of Exploration through funding by NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration for a one-year grant for 2006-2007. It is a pilot project, which is intended to provide teacher professional development for middle school and high school teachers, by presenting in video format successful teaching of ocean sciences.

The rationale for this proposed project is built upon the need to promote increased use of the already existing and well-respected NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration (OE) curriculum Learning Ocean Science Through Ocean Exploration. It is also reinforced by NOAA’s Plan for Education, which stresses the importance of infusing NOAA-based curricula into professional development programs for current, and in particular, future educators.


There is a continued need to improve ocean science education and to bring oceans to the forefront of the attention of the education community (as highlighted in the Report of the President’s Panel on Ocean Exploration -- Discovering the Earth’s Final Frontier: A U.S. Strategy for Ocean Exploration). It is also a continuing challenge to identify what captivates students and teachers about ocean exploration that can be incorporated into curriculum.

The vision of the project is to build on and extend the work that the NOAA OE Education group has already done with its curriculum, Learning Ocean Science Through Ocean Exploration, through the use of video, multimedia, and the web. Teachers can use the web-based video and video segments both in structured professional development and pre-service teacher programs, as well as in an unstructured manner by accessing the videos and related materials through the web on an “as-needed” basis. We foresee a large number of teacher users, who would have been unable to attend NOAA OE’s face-to-face professional development programs, benefiting from use of the curriculum.

For this current project the videos are based on two ocean science lessons from this curriculum and on two master teachers who are familiar with the curriculum and the field of ocean sciences. They were selected for their ability and experience in using successful science teaching strategies. The focus will be on pre-service teachers as well in-service teachers.

Goals and Objectives

To use video (on the web and DVD) technologies to reach a wider audience for teacher use of the NOAA OE curriculum;
To offer a supplemental method to enhance NOAA OE’s teacher professional development and offer it to existing and prospective teachers, particularly in areas where there are large numbers of under served and underrepresented groups;
To help teachers engage more fully and effectively in ocean science education through observing master teachers presenting the OE curriculum and its lesson plans;
To create new multimedia learning resources to support new teaching and learning processes for in-service and pre-service teachers;
To determine the usefulness of video, DVD and web-based formats to extend the reach of NOAA OE’s existing curriculum;
To understand the effect of video on enhancing pre-service and in-service teachers’ understanding of content and pedagogy in the area of ocean science through the video medium;
To provide demonstrations for pre-service teachers of real classroom activities with ocean sciences content (curriculum and methods) that may be useful in their classrooms in the future;
To help teachers enhance their expertise in ocean sciences, while showing ways for improving their teaching methods;
To offer a meaningful learning experience for teachers and prospective teachers, while at the same time getting feedback about the effectiveness of video for use in professional development settings.

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