Key points
- The Educator on Board program concluded in 2019. Educator on Board was a professional learning program offering educators the opportunity to join a voyage on board CSIRO’s marine research vessel (RV) Investigator.
The Educator on Board program provides berths for primary and secondary teachers to sail on board our state-of-the-art marine research vessel (RV) Investigator for short voyages.
On board, teachers assist scientists with marine research, enhance their STEM content knowledge, run outreach activities including live video broadcasts, and develop curriculum-linked resources to be trialled in their own classroom and shared with other teachers.
Challenge
Emily Fewster joined RV Investigator for a 15-day voyage in the Tasman Sea from 27 December 2018 to 10 January 2019. She worked alongside voyage researchers to collect volcanic rocks from seamounts to help piece together the story of the breakup between Australia and Antarctica some 34 million years ago.
Although this voyage had a strong focus on geology, Emily also wanted to use her voyage experience to highlight career pathways in Oceanography using staff roles on RV Investigator as examples for her students, and to provide insight on the different technology used to survey the ocean floor.
Onboard, Emily learnt about various scientific equipment used to study the marine and atmospheric environment. One example is the ‘Argo Float’, a sensor that measures ocean conditions. When deployed, Argo floats collect subsurface observations at depths of between one and two kilometres before ascending to the surface every 10 days, transmitting data to satellites before diving down again to start a new cycle.
Impact
To discover more about oceanography in the Southern Ocean, Emily and her Year 11 Marine Studies students decided to trial the “Adopt-A-Float" project. The first step of the adoption process was to name their Argo float, with the deceptively simple entry of ‘Alan’, being the preferred choice, named after the world’s oldest living krill at the Australian Antarctic Division.
In 2020, Emily’s senior Earth and Environmental Science students looked at Alan’s data and compared it to larger data sets to investigate changes in ocean currents, ocean circulation, and ocean acidification.
Teacher Developed Resources
A range of marine education resources developed by our Educator on Board alumni are available for free download. You can download these resources from our Education Resource Library.