We have the largest freshwater system in the world! It's
such a gift. These are treasures that I want to share with my students. There are people
that like going to Disney and ride the rides, but this is my amusement park. To see really
cool technology utilized to solve problems that we never dreamed we could, so it's very fun.
With Great Lakes literacy you need to learn about the principles and concepts related
to the Great Lakes, and then you should be able to communicate that, and then
the ideal piece is that you are an informed and responsible steward of the Great Lakes.
So the marines sanctuary here, it's in the mid-Lake Michigan region of Wisconsin. In
partnership with the state of Wisconsin we manage 36 historic shipwrecks that tell the story of
America's westward expansion and the growth of the United States. They're incredible historic
sites and they give us an opportunity to share those stories with the public, but also manage
them creatively to find ways that we can use those sites to make impacts ashore. Tourism …
Recreation … Impacts in education. So we get creative with the way we manage this place. When
you think about trying to increase Great Lakes literacy across the basin that is a large ask. One
of the best ways to do that is to reach teachers because then they're able to reach all their
students and year after year they're teaching new students. So for us they're a helpful partner in
increasing Great Lakes literacy across the basin. So today we’ve got a great opportunity we have two
teachers sponsored by Michigan Sea Grant who have come over to Wisconsin and we're giving them an
immersive experience. They're riding along one of our research projects where we've got a number of
things going on. We've got photogrammetry, we're filming high-definition video, we're
shooting stills, we're doing archeology, and we're also surveying with the sonar. So they're getting
an immersive experience to see how all of those operations work and how they're relevant to the
health and protection of Lake Michigan. Well, we are here at the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast
National Marine Sanctuary investigating some of the wrecks that are found in the sanctuary.
We have divers in the water right now that are down taking film of one of these shipwrecks
and developing photogrammetry images of the shipwreck and taking still photographs as well.
We've been connecting teachers with scientists for probably 15 years now.
Just like you want the teachers to do with their students and have experiential learning, we're
trying to model that for the teachers and have them have hands-on experiential opportunity to
work side by side with scientists. So they learn about the research taking place on the Great Lakes
and for them to then take that information back to the classroom and share it with their students.
We’ll need some help with this one.
The sonar that I teach is World War II, single beam, sort of low-tech. And to
hear about 400 separate beams, tunable at various frequencies.
It's an incredible amount of technology that really helps you characterize shipwrecks and
helps us, you know, make plans for how to take care of them.
We'll see something come through this water column. There's a multi-beam image of a shipwreck.
The real advantage of the photogrammetry is it's extremely detailed because it's collected by a
diver around multiple facets, we get a really detailed image of the site itself. The multi-beam
allows us to put that structure in a coordinate system in three dimensions and know exactly
where it is in the Earth. What the depth is, the highest points, the extents around the sides of
it. The sonar is a very powerful tool to derive this geodetic information around these sites.
You can have all the passion in the world,
but to go out and live it. The ability for Sea Grant to provide enriching experiences and
depth of understanding, there's no technology that will replace in-place learning. And
that's important for teachers to bring to their students, but it's also important
for teachers to go experience as well. So Sea Grant provides that, I’m eternally grateful.
I will not be able to take my 150 students out on a boat in a Great Lake to do the
things that I'm getting to do here, but I can bring these things to my students.
My seventh grade curriculum includes an understanding water systems and watersheds
and so I want to take that further for my kids to understand the Great Lakes system better,
to understand their impact, and understand how the Great Lakes is connected to ocean
systems and how my little tiny community here in one place is connected globally.
I mean we hope they take some of this into the classroom and begin to use it to enhance their
teaching. But what we really want to do is circle back with them after they've had a chance to think
about this experience and let us know how could we do this sustainably. Can we create a “Teacher at
Sea” program so every year we're having more and more educators on board and make that a tailored
and a sustainable experience that's meaningful that really gets at the kind of things they need.
So we're looking forward to these teachers telling us what we can do to set that path to create a
really great education program at the sanctuary. Looking out on the water we tend to just think
about the waves and the impact to us as we're sitting here, but there's a lot going on under
the water. These sanctuaries offer a whole other world, a world that is not as easily understood,
but they've taken great pains to bring resources to us. Let's enjoy them.
thank you
foreign
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