Joint Oceanographic Institutions, United States

The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP)--United States Implementing Organization (USIO) sponsors a Teacher at Sea program to provide opportunities for educators to participate in a seagoing research experience aboard the JOIDES Resolution and translate scientific results from the expedition into useful teaching resources. Alan Gelatt, a high school earth science teacher, participated in IODP Expedition 309--Superfast Spreading Rate Crust 2. Expedition 309 sought to provide the first sampling of a complete section of ocean crust, confirm the nature of high-level axial magma chambers, and define the relationship between magma chambers and the overlying lavas and the interactions between magmatic, hydrothermal, and tectonic processes. Working with mentors from the shipboard scientific party, Mr. Gelatt created a suite of six laboratory exercises that utilize actual cores recovered during the expedition. The exercises use life-size core images, printed on a poster-sized handout, to guide students through experimental analyses that are conducted in the laboratories on the JOIDES Resolution Laboratory exercises in Core Section Curation, Mineralogy of Ocean Crust, Density of Ocean Crust, Visual Core Description, Drilling Rate of Ocean Crust, and Magnetic Anomaly/Topography were created for high school and undergraduate earth science classes. This project represents a quality example of a teacher resource material that links a large scientific research program and its high-level science to K-12 and undergraduate classrooms. By providing opportunities for educators to sail on scientific expeditions the IODP-USIO Teacher at Sea program teaches teachers about scientific ocean drilling and takes advantage of the unique perspective that teachers have to translate IODP expedition specific science into valuable inquiry-based education content.