Thanks to the many people who attended our recent ‘Night with a Polar Scientist” event at the Seattle Aquarium.   Christopher’s talk was certainly polarizing…  Learn more about his research.

On June 26, 2008, COSEE-OLC researchers Carrie Tzou, Giovanna Scalone, and Philip Bell presented findings from a cross-setting ethnographic study of how youth learn about the environment and ocean science at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The poster, entitled “Developing a sense of place: Privilege, class and positioning in formal and informal environmental learning,” described the connection between how places get culturally constructed for and by youth and possible learning pathways available to youth. The presentation was part of a larger poster session focused on learning pathways to developing expertise in a variety of domains, including making financial decisions and videogaming. Tzou, Scalone, and Bell are from the University of Washington’s College of Education.

COSEE-Ocean Learning Communities and the Seattle Aquarium invite you to attend our upcoming mid season event, “An Evening With a Polar Scientist” on Tuesday June 24th, from 6:30-9:00pm at the Seattle Aquarium. The evening event includes a presentation by Dr. Christopher Krembs, a biological oceanographer with the Polar Science Center of the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington. Dr. Krembs studies the microbial mechanisms that alter the sea ice environment influencing nutrients in the ocean due to climate change and ice retreat. His presentation is followed by a question and answer period. For more information contact Susan Bullerdick at susan@aquariumsociety.org or 206.838.3916

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COSEE-OLC has an active, deep collaboration in place with the LIFE Center, an NSF-funded Science of Learning Center. In 2004, the LIFE Center and the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington established the LIFE Diversity Panel. The Panel’s goal was to summarize important principles that educational practitioners, policy makers, and researchers can use to build upon the learning that occurs in the homes and community cultures of students from diverse groups. In May 2007, the centers released the consensus report produced by the LIFE Diversity Panel called Learning In and Out of School in Diverse Environments: Life-Long, Life-Wide, and Life-Deep. A major assumption of this report is that if educators make use of the informal learning that occurs in the homes and communities of students, the achievement gap between marginalized students and mainstream students can be reduced.

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Learn more about nationwide EarthDay 208 events.  Some COSEE-OLC members will be walking Seattle’s beaches on Puget Sound and Lake Washington picking up trash. Contact Rick for details if you’d like to join us.  UPDATE: we collected 2.3 pounds of trash, but the beaches were already very clean.  Kudos to asll who joined in the hunt for trash!

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The Puget Sound Partnership recently released a 5 minute film, “Shifting Baselines”, as part of their public education campaign regarding the current status of the Puget Sound. COSEE collaborative work on cooking spices in Puget Sound made the final cut!  Watch the video 

There has been so much intersting oceanography in the news lately; hundreds of off-axis earthquakes in the Cascadia Basin, flat-faced fish, and now new evidence of man’s relentless alteration of the oceans.  Turns out that relentlessly harvested fish leave behind populations dominated by juveniles; these young fish mature faster and are more likely to show genetic variability that can impact the population.  Researchers of a new study published in the journal Nature found evidence for a genetic impact, adding weight to a recent body of evidence suggesting that environmentally-driven evolutionary changes can occur far more quickly than once believed.

A newly discovered pink-and-tan psychedelically striped frogfish with a flat face,
frowning mouth and arm-like fins could be part of a formerly unknown family of vertebrates.
The fish is about 4 inches long. (M. Snyder/starknakedfish.com)