Middle and high school teachers: Explore coasts, marine science, and GIS with CoastLines! 

CoastLines is a Comprehensive Project for Students and Teachers funded by the Information Technologies for Students and Teachers program at the National Science Foundation. It will introduce fundamental concepts about information technologies (IT) to grade 7-12 schools. The project will accomplish this goal by involving teachers and students in using geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS) to conduct scientific studies of coastal ecosystems in the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network. CoastLines will build on lessons learned by the Center for Image Processing in Education and other practitioners about offering GIS-based training to K-12 educators.

CoastLines will recruit 30 teachers each year to learn to use geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS) to investigate ocean research conducted by scientists at four sites of NSF’s Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) network. Since 1980 NSF has been monitoring 26 marine LTER sites, scattered across coastal United States, Antarctica, and French Polynesia. The CoastLines LTER partners are Florida Coastal Everglades (FCE), Moorea Coral Reef (MCR), Santa Barbara Coastal (SBC), and the Virginia Coast Reserve (VCR). Summer institutes will be held at the home institutions of each of the sites: Florida International University (FCE); University of California, Santa Barbara (MCR and SBC); and the University of Virginia (VCA). Teachers will use data from the Moorea site as a baseline to compare ecological information from the U.S. locations.

During their time with the CoastLines project, teachers will:

• attend an online course in which they will learn how to use the My World GIS software, GPS technology, data from the participating LTER sites, and field-data collection protocols to create standards-based activities for classroom instruction;
• attend a two-week summer institute at one of the three mainland LTER sites during which they will interact with project staff and LTER scientists and design and test activities based on LTER science; and
• receive support from the project as they implement a CoastLines activity in their classroom.

Each project participant will receive:

• 24 hours of online training, 40 hours of face-to-face professional development, and 16 hours of implementation support;
• compensation for all travel and lodging expenses related to the summer institute;
• a stipend for all time spent on the project;
• continuing education units (CEUs) or graduate credit;
• the use of all materials provided by the project; and
• a 10-seat license for the My World GIS software.

For more information, visit the project page. To apply for the CoastLines project, please complete the online application .