Blogs Visited

I enjoyed reading Ernestine's blog, especially information about Tlingit oral traditions. I revisited Nick's blog because when I changed my settings to show a thumbnail of the blogs I've visited, his caught my attention. I'm a Three Musketeers fan from way back. I responded to a question  he had raised about information from my blog and included a link to another application called Liquid Mac that uses the accelerometer in newer Mac computers like the Mac Seismometer does.  I visited Michael's blog.

Liquid Mac

Ocean Systems

Earth from Space

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth 
when it is quite clearly Ocean." 

 -Arthur C. Clarke

The content of this module was not new to me; but as with previous modules, the resources are very good and will only add to my ability to convey to my students what might otherwise be difficult topics to convey. I particularly liked those that help to demonstrate the Coriolis effect, thermohaline circulation, and the video about Ben Franklin's discovery of the Gulf Stream. As an aside, the Examine Global Surface Currents interactive seems to have lost its linkage (or at least I was not able to access it).
 

Beach Seining in Chesapeake Bay

 I had the pleasure of participating in a program for teachers of oceanography at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland for two weeks last summer. The knowledge gained there added to my own knowledge gained from college days and years of teaching about the oceans to students who live near, depend on, and interact daily with the marine environment. It was a fantastic program that I would recommend to any/all teachers of the ocean sciences.  It’s called the Maury Project http://www.ametsoc.org/amsedu/maury/. 

I found it interesting to see the presentation by Dolly Garza. Some years ago, I participated in a summer program about Global Climate Change that she organized. 

Collecting Data

I’m using the resources provided almost immediately, in fact I’ve backed up to review plate tectonics with the additional resources gained in previous modules. The resources from this module will be used when we cover surface and deep ocean currents in the ocean science class I’m currently teaching. 

Being relatively new to the community, I often depend on the local knowledge possessed by my students about the local environment. Encouraging them to share their expertise serves a dual purpose - I learn local knowledge and they gain confidence in sharing their knowledge with someone who they normally look to to provide answers rather than questions.

While looking for climate data for this module, I found this interactive world climate map, which I found useful for comparing the cities assigned and a number of other locations relative to proximity to the ocean and/or ocean currents.

World Climate Index Map