GLIN==> New Website Provides Educators with Great Lakes Teaching Tools

New Website Provides Educators with Great Lakes Teaching Tools

 

February 1, 2011

 

For Immediate Release

 

A new online tool created by Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence
(COSEE) Great Lakes and Ohio State University's Sea Grant Program delivers
resources to help educators from around the region better integrate Great
Lakes science into their classrooms. Launched this past fall, the Great
Lakes Literacy Principles website at greatlakesliteracy.net
<http://www.greatlakesliteracy.net/>  links teaching resources with each of
the eight newly created Great Lakes Literacy Principles.

 

"The website pulls together important resources for educators and scientists
who are using and teaching these principles," explains Dr. Rosanne Fortner,
director of COSEE Great Lakes and former associate director of Ohio State's
Sea Grant Stone Laboratory. "A scientist can find out how his or her
research fits into curriculum for outreach purposes and a teacher can find
out where the education standards match the literacy principles."

 

COSEE Great Lakes created the Great Lakes Literacy Principles using the
Ocean Literacy Principles as its framework and with the assistance from Lake
Erie Partnership, a partnership among four Ohio agencies, which had started
to develop the Lake Erie Literacy Principles. COSEE California, a key
organization fostering Ocean Literacy, provided support.

 

"We attempted to include the Great Lakes in the Ocean Literacy Principles,
but it seemed like that would trivialize the lakes," Fortner says. "Rather
than downplay the lakes, we decided to go the route of taking each Ocean
Literacy Principle and translating it to a Great Lakes context."

 

With the eight principles finalized last summer, COSEE Great Lakes created
supplemental educational materials, such as lesson plans, online
presentations, and actual lake data, to help teachers incorporate the Great
Lakes into their lesson plans.

 

"Scientists use the principles to demonstrate how their research is key to
the public's understanding of the Great Lakes," Fortner says. "And teachers
have the principles as a reminder that they can teach the topics that are
already in the curriculum in a Great Lakes context."

 

Started in 2005 and funded by the National Science Foundation and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, COSEE Great Lakes with its
network of Great Lakes educators has been successful in fostering
scientist-educator collaboration to place the Great Lakes in schools'
curricula. COSEE Great Lakes also has hosted workshops based on land and on
a research vessel to allow educators to work alongside scientists and
participate in Great Lakes research first-hand. For more information about
COSEE Great Lakes, visit  <http://www.CoseeGreatLakes.net>
coseegreatlakes.net.

 

To download a brochure about the literacy principles or view resources
related to the principles, go to
<http://www.greatlakesliteracy.net/resources/>
greatlakesliteracy.net/resources. During February, the Great Lakes
Information Network is featuring the website as its site of the month.

 

To learn more about the formation of the Great Lakes Literacy Principles,
visit  <http://ohioseagrant.osu.edu/_documents/twineline/v32i3.pdf>
ohioseagrant.osu.edu/_documents/twineline/v32i3.pdf .

 

###

 

Contact:

Rosanne Fortner, Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence Great
Lakes, Director: 

910-278-6754, Fortner.2 at osu.edu.

 

 

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