Our mission is to provide learners, the next generation of ocean citizens, with the knowledge and tools to understand our influence on the ocean and the ocean’s influence on us.
What is Ocean School?
Dalhousie University and the Ocean Frontier Institute have teamed up with the National Film Board of Canada to create Ocean School. Ocean School is a free, innovative inquiry-based learning experience.
At Ocean School, learners explore habitats at the bottom of the Gulf of St. Lawrence with virtual reality. They strike a pose with a life-sized augmented reality whale, and dissect virtual cod! Through stunning original animation, they learn about the history of the cod through the eyes of an Indigenous artist. 360° videos transport them to places they could never go—diving in a kelp forest, or hiking on a tropical island 300 miles off the coast of Costa Rica.
The Ocean School experience begins by presenting learners with a big question — a challenge that guides their inquiry. Each piece of media comes with a customizable activity that educators can assign via Google Classroom or download to use in class. At the end of a module, learners develop a “Take Action” plan to address the critical social and environmental problems they’ve been learning about.
Ocean School empowers the next generation of ocean citizens, researchers, and innovators, with the knowledge and tools to investigate and design innovative solutions for the accelerating challenges that face the world’s ocean.
What is the educational approach?
Inquiry-based learning
Ocean School aims to build an ocean-literate society by challenging learners to think critically, ask questions, explore multiple perspectives and take positive actions to improve Canadian oceans and their interconnected ecosystems. Our goal is “empowerment” through action-driven inquiry-based learning, in order to bring about environmental and social change.
Inquiry-based learning (IBL) encourages students to take the lead in their learning experience. Posing their own questions and gathering evidence, learners practice the skills they need to participate in knowledge creation. In the Ocean School program, the media experiences are designed to support open-ended investigations into a question or a problem. Students and educators share responsibility for identifying problems that students can investigate further. Together, they engage in critical thinking, collection and analysis of evidence, logical reasoning, and creative problem-solving.
You have access to this through your NFB account in SK.
