Ocean Data Explorations
*New* Community Newsletter
September, 2018
Welcome to the Data Explorations Community!
As someone who has been involved in one of our prior projects, we are inviting you to be part of our next adventure…
Starting this fall, you can look forward to this newsletter for monthly updates, opportunities, and stories about teaching with data from our community of ocean scientists and educators.
Over the last twenty years, our team, including partners at Rutgers, the Lawrence Hall of Science, and many other universities and colleges, has been involved in developing effective strategies for teaching and learning with data. As educators we want our learners to achieve a deeper understanding of oceanography concepts while developing science skills in analyzing and interpreting data – core skills for the workplace and for civic engagement in the 21st century. Using real world data sets has been shown to be interesting and motivating to students, as well as increasing the relevancy of the content to their lives.
It can be challenging for undergraduate students to access large online data sets and make meaning from them. And it’s also challenging for educators to introduce to students how to work with data. We need to work together to effectively bring oceanographic data into the classroom.
Our latest project: OOI Data Workshops
This past summer, the Consortium for Ocean Leadership and Rutgers University hosted four week-long workshops for early career scientists interested in learning how to access and use OOI data in their research. A total of 53 scientists including biologists, geologists, chemists and physical oceanographers participated in the workshops held at Rutgers University. Scientists dove into OOI data and developed data validation reports using Python.
With the growth in usage of dynamic scientific programming, like Jupyter Notebooks, the ability for researchers and educators to share code to download, process and create datasets and visualization is expanding greatly. This new capability will allow open-science in its true form, where researchers can share all of the necessary code, data, visuals and (most importantly) explanatory text so others can report on or adapt their work. Overall, these workshops were very successful and reviewed positively by the scientists.
Our Big Announcement…
We are so pleased to announce we have received an award from the National Science Foundation to expand our Data Explorations program. Our focus will be on the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI).
The OOI has constructed observational and computer infrastructure that provides sustained ocean measurements to study climate variability, ocean circulation, ecosystem dynamics, air-sea exchange, seafloor processes, and plate-scale geodynamics for the coming decades.
We will be offering professors, who teach undergraduates, opportunities to learn about existing data explorations and develop new data interactive activities that use OOI data and resources. Opportunities include a host of workshops, webinars, and self-guided online tutorials to harness OOI resources for undergraduate teaching. Stay tuned!!!