About the EARTH Program
EARTH | Workshops | Lessons | Resources
Recognizing the need to educate the public about the value of research and help them understand scientific methodology, this MBARI/Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA) collaboration allows us to test new ideas for public outreach and education. One of MBARI’s joint projects with MBA, Education and Research: Testing Hypotheses (EARTH) lays new groundwork, providing teachers with a means for integrating real-time data with existing educational standards and tested curriculum in an interactive and engaging way.
EARTH uses near-real-time data from ocean observatories to design and test outreach with the Internet as an interface to scientists, teachers, students, and the public. Several workshops were held at MBARI in 2002-2005 bringing educators, scientists, and engineers together to develop effective educational practices for access and use of near-real-time data in preparation for the future deployment of benthic observatories (in particular, the Monterey Accelerated Research System, MARS). Since 2006 MBARI has partnered with a variety of organizations across the country to host the EARTH workshop.
Participants include educators from other research institutions, universities, community colleges, and high schools as well as MBARI and MBA staff. Initial efforts of EARTH target high school and undergraduate students, with the ultimate goal of reaching kindergarten through college. This effort will enhance online education material on the ocean and resources for teachers already available on MBARI’s website and the Aquarium’s ‘E-quarium’ Web site and ‘Learning Center’.
Background information on earlier EARTH workshops are provided on this website as well as links to activities developed as part of the previous workshops. If you are interested in using any of these activities in your classroom, please take the time to fill out the assessment rubric and return it to George Matsumoto (earthATmbariDOTorg). Any comments or thoughts regarding these activities are welcome. Please be aware that some of these activities have NOT been tested in the classroom yet and some of them are still under development (e.g. Photographic Identification). We will be updating these pages throughout the year, so please check back if you are interested.
A comprehensive literature review of potential approaches and effective educational practices for the development of a national ocean observing education product has been generated as part of the results from the 2005 EARTH workshop and is available here as a pdf file.
A requirement of the application process is to trial an EARTH lesson, complete the feedback rubric (word version), and mail the rubric to George Matsumoto (earthATmbariDOTorg). Applications should include a completed rubric and a cover letter that includes the following information: your school/district, grade level/s, subject/s taught, and email/phone contact (both school and personal as the school email system sometimes rejects our group emails). Please also address the following questions: Why do you want to be selected for this workshop? What makes you the ideal candidate? Application deadlines and workshop location/dates will be posted as soon as they have been confirmed.
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