HEALTHY OCEANS, HEALTHY PLANET


La Mar de Ciencia” is a competition for young artists interested in Science and the sea. Students of Primary and Secondary grade levels from Spain can present their videos, drawings and stories through the website www.lamardeciencia.es until March 10, 2017. “La Mar de Ciencia” is an initiative of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the Balearic Islands Coastal Observing and Forecasting System (SOCIB) and "la Caixa" Banking Foundation and its aim is to bring the marine sciences closer to the students and raise awareness about the importance of improving our knowledge on the sustainable management of the oceans.

As a novelty, this edition, entitled "Healthy Oceans, Healthy Planet", allows group participation in the video mode and the contributions can be presented in Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Galician and English. The winners will enjoy a scientific weekend in the Balearic Islands to learn more about the research carried out at the CSIC centres, participate in a SOCIB oceanographic campaign and visit the Marine-Terrestrial National Park of the Cabrera Archipelago. The classroom with the best video will be awarded with a digital whiteboard.




I reckon that this is a great opportunity to develop  students' awareness on the  enormous impacts that humans have  on marine ecosystems and resources.

If your students choose to focus on the Mediterranean sea, the program "Medclic: the Mediterranean in one click"  can be of great help.

For students aged 14-18, National Geographic offers a great amount of lesson plans on the threat which is being inflicted on our oceans.   I would  recommend the following one:

 http://www.nationalgeographic.org/lesson/human-impacts-world-ocean/

Let me finish by  stepping  back into the 17th century to pay my humble tribute to  Blaise Pascal, great mathematician, physicist and philosopher, who  warned us about the threats oceans have to face.

Among so many home truths, he said:

"The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble". 

Therefore, we can and we must do our best to protect our oceans and today we can start by encouraging our students to take part in the competition I suggested above these lines. 
  

ICT tools that help teachers of any content area

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Our seminar session on January 10th will aim at  presenting some ICT tools that will be very useful for our CLIL practice:

The first one we will focus on is www.memorizenow.com, which allows you to enter text and then use a variety of devices to help you commit it to memory. You can read the text as it is, reduce it to reminder letters—filling in the additional letters to complete the words as necessary to help you remember the passage—and display the passages you've entered in a flashcard style system.

The second tool we will see in our session will be www.thatquiz.org.  This tool is a free service for teachers who want to create online tests for their students. Registration is for free and teachers who register  receive complete record-keeping of their student grades.  They have access to more precise test-generation tools, can create single tests with questions from different categories, can create matching and multiple choice questions, and can access a public test library.

Another tool which is bound to faclitate your teaching practice is www.helpteaching.com. This site  enables you to create and save your own questions and tests. Their library of pre-made tests, worksheets, and activities covers all K-12 subjects.

I hope to provide seminar members with plenty of examples on the usefulness of the websites above  and from these lines I would like to invite all teachers to try these very easy to use and time-saving tools.