Tracking Ocean Currents

NOAA Global Drifter Program: Drifter Buoy

The task is simple: "Your job is to design and draw a device to track ocean currents."

As we've been studying different aspects of ocean currents — causes, movement, etc. — it's a worthwhile endeavor to think about the instruments used to track ocean currents. A major component of How Science Works includes gathering data, and I think it is important for students to consider the myriad challenges scientists face when tasked to collect a particular type of data, such as ocean currents. I, therefore, ask students to design a device that could track ocean currents and share their design with the class (How Science Works, "publication," "discussion with colleagues," and "feedback and peer review").

The designs are always innovative, creative, thoughtful, and reasonably practical. The best part of this activity is comparing student designs with actual ocean tracking devices used by NOAA and seeing the overlap.

NOAA's Global Drifter Program utilizes drifter buoys to track ocean currents around the world:

"The modern drifter is a high-tech version of the "message in a bottle". It consists of a surface buoy and a subsurface drogue (sea anchor), attached by a long, thin tether. The buoy measures temperature and other properties, and has a transmitter to send the data to passing satellites. The drogue dominates the total area of the instrument and is centered at a depth of 15 meters beneath the sea surface."

Students are delighted to see that many of the ideas they developed in class are actually used in the drifter program. We discuss similarities and differences between their designs and NOAA's drifters to better understand the challenges and limitations involved in measuring ocean currents.

The design activity is followed up with a tracking activity that uses data from NOAA's drifter buoys to track the flow of global ocean currents. Students discover that currents in the Pacific Ocean flow in a giant, clockwise gyre at a fairly slow, but steady rate; in the process, large quantities of heat are redistributed around the planet.

It's easy for a teacher to have students just learn factual information about currents from a textbook, but that's like eating processed junk food—it provides little in the way of long-lasting nutritional value (i.e., shallow learning). US science organizations such as NOAA, NASA, and USGS provide valuable data and information that is perfect for an inquiry-based science classroom. These organizations are the primary sources of science discovery and exploration on planet Earth, and we should be leveraging their expertise in the classroom to engage our students in How Science Really Works.

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A sampling of student designs for ocean tracking devices:

Global Climate Change Article Analysis

Image credit: IAN Symbol Libraries

To finish our annual study of global climate change, I ask students to survey a variety of scientific literature outlining the impacts of climate change around the world and to interpret their findings. Students need the opportunity to engage with the scientific literature around global climate change in order to develop their own sense of climate science literacy. The US Global Change Research Program sums up the importance of climate literacy in the following guide, Climate Literacy—The Essential Principles of Climate Sciences:

"Climate Science Literacy is an understanding of your influence on climate and climate’s influence on you and society. A climate-literate person:

• understands the essential principles of Earth’s climate system,
• knows how to assess scientifically credible information about climate,
• communicates about climate and climate change in a meaningful way, and
• is able to make informed and responsible decisions with regard to actions that may affect climate."

I provide students with a wide sampling of scientific articles that document climate change and climate change impacts from around the world. Each student selects, reads, and summarizes the main scientific ideas from several of these articles, then chooses one article to interpret in more detail. In the final analysis, students create a labeled diagram that illustrates the main scientific ideas from their chosen article and explains the connection between the science and the climate change impacts.

For most students, this is the first time they have engaged in a formal literature review of scientific material, thus time and support is provided to help students dissect these articles efficiently. At our school we use a Mark-It-Up reading strategy, which helps students break down complex texts into the comprehensible essentials. Students write their "mark-it-up" notes on stickies and place these stickies around the room next to their article's placard. All students visit and review the stickies created by other students before drafting their final analysis.

For the articles themselves, I keep my eyes open for timely and relevant stories from reputable and fairly unbiased science sources such as BBC Science, National Geographic, NPR, NOAA, NASA, etc. The articles are usually no more than two pages in length, span a range of teenage reading levels, are scientifically-based with data and evidence, and encompass a wide range of climate impacts around the planet. A few of these articles are provided in the links at the end of this post.

As mentioned in my previous post, my greatest hope is that my students develop an appreciation for science so that they can make logical and informed decisions based on data and evidence, not hype and hot air.

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A Sampling of Climate Change Articles:

• BBC, Alien Invaders: The Next Generation
• Boston Globe, Scientists Say Climate Change Could Make Coffee and Chocolate Endangered Foods
• NOAA, Life of an Air Flask
• NOAA News, NOAA Greenhouse Gas Index Continues Climbing
• NPR, Climate Change Presents a Burr for Coffee Growers
• NYTimes, Carbon Detectives Are Tracking Gases in Colorado

The Power of Inquiry

There were less than five minutes left in class, yet three students asked me if they could use Excel to create a graph from their experimental data. Many other students would have looked at the clock and begun stealthily packing up their binders for the day, but these students wanted to graph their results. My answer was a no-brainer, "Go for it! You can do it!" And in those few remaining minutes they worked up an excellent pie graph showing their results.

Investigating the Rates
of Heating and Cooling

This is the kind of awesome, independent learning that makes my day. I promote an inquiry-based classroom where students are in charge of their destiny. I do not spoon-feed answers to my students, but challenge them to forge their own paths of learning and take charge of their own education. To me, creating and encouraging independent learners is the noblest goal of any teacher. Teachers as facilitators and cheerleaders, who provide the resources and scaffolds to enable students to blaze their own trail.

I was so proud of these three students that day. They epitomized all that great learning should be in every classroom, every day.

Some students and parents may balk at my approach. "Why won't you just tell me the answer?" is an oft-heard question, especially in the beginning of each school year. But slowly, with encouragement and cajoling, I wean students off their dependence on quick, easy answers in favor of deeper thinking, problem-solving, and meaningful learning. I realize I may not be every student's favorite teacher at that moment when I ask them to do and think for themselves, but given our challenging times and complex world, how could I expect less?

The National Science Education Standards (1996) define the fundamental abilities of inquiry as follows:

• Identify questions that can be answered through scientific investigations.
• Design and conduct a scientific investigation.
• Use appropriate tools and techniques to gather, analyze, and interpret data.
• Develop descriptions, explanations, predictions, and models using evidence.
• Think critically and logically to make the relationships between evidence and explanations.
• Recognize and analyze alternative explanations and predictions.
• Communicate scientific procedures and explanations.
• Use mathematics in all aspects of scientific inquiry.

In its official position statement on scientific inquiry, the National Science Teachers Association "recommends that all K–16 teachers embrace scientific inquiry and is committed to helping educators make it the centerpiece of the science classroom. The use of scientific inquiry will help ensure that students develop a deep understanding of science and scientific inquiry."

These are the standards toward which I strive...