Coral Ecology

An interdisciplinary project with Krystal Rypien, Ph.D.

 

 

Essential Question(s): How do organisms in nature contribute to ecosystem homeostasis? What role do corals play in the ecosystem? What impact does coral reef decline have on the marine ecosystem?

Teachers:

Katie Kennedy - Biology

Steve Wavra - Biology

Tamara Cooper - Biology

 

Project Overview

Led by three science teachers, the Olympian High School CyberBridge team integrated math and language arts into their Biology classrooms to create a project about coral reefs. Dr. Krystal Rypien, a marine ecologist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, worked with the students and teachers to explore how ecosystems function, how corals grow and thrive, and what factors influence the health of coral reef ecosystems.  Field trips enhanced their experience and included visits to Dr. Rypien's research lab and the local tide pool habitat. Students used a variety of technologies such as WebQuest, graphing software, and word processing to conduct research and report their findings. For their culminating media project, students created a computer-based interactive coral reef that was used during a public exhibition at the San Diego Science Festival EXPO day. The event attracted 30,000 people and the teachers and students engaged the public with live animals while showcasing their project.  Some of their project highlights can be seen in the following ScienceBridge produced  “What did you do in school today?” video.

Having trouble viewing? Try watching at SciVee.tv

Teacher Products

During the Summer Institute, teacher teams created a planning document for piloting and implementing their projects throughout the year. This document allowed the teachers to plan their collaboration, test their lesson plans, engage their partner scientist and to effectively integrate the use of technology into the classroom. In addition to this project plan, a few examples of their lesson plans (some interdisciplinary) are posted here:

 

Project Planning Document 

Pilot Matrix

Interdisciplinary Lesson Plans

Ecology Pre-Test 

Biology Bacteria Lab 

Bacteria Cultivation Lab Analysis

Birch Aquarium Scavenger Hunt

Coral Ecosystems Brochure Template

Ecology Project Specifications

Environmentalist Rough Draft

Lesson Plan - Ecology Project

Lesson Plan - Scientists Visit

Sand Dollar Student Write-Up

Other

Storyboard

Tide Pool Guidelines

Ecology PowerPoint Biome Rubric

WebQuest Digital Media

Coral Reef WebQuest

Coral Reef WebQuest Links

 

Student Products

One of the goals of the CyberBridge program was to expand the use of media and cyber-infrastructure (CI) in the classroom.  The students created various media products to achieve this goal. Olympian High School created an interactive coral reef using Adobe Flash, a program that allows the user to create interactive content. This interactive content is unavailable at this time but below are some screenshots.

   

  

Photos

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