NOAA Sea to Sky: Education resource database

Watch. Explore. Discover. View the beauty and mystery of the ocean realm captured on video around the globe. Videos are organized into collections to help educators.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the National Marine Sanctuary System, the best of the best educational materials for an elementary school audience have been compiled in collaboration with the National Park Trust. Discover Spectacular with these education and outreach digital materials focused on 10 exciting topics: climate change, ocean acidification, marine debris, kelp forest ecosystems, coral reef ecosystems, sea turtles, sharks, whales and ocean noise, seabirds, and shipwrecks.

This collection of six separate lessons includes tutorial videos for each themed lesson, except ecological field modeling.

1. Density dynamics: Experiment by creating four model bodies of water and observe how they compare. 
2. Ecological field monitoring: Get into the field and investigate the ecosystems in your local community using field equipment.
3. Glaciers: Investigate how topography came to be through glacial activity 33,000 years ago. Use geologic and physical tests to uncover the evidence left behind by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Track and hunt down the path laid by ice giants of the past.  
4. Marine debris & microplastics: Discover how marine debris impacts the environment as you experiment with buoyancy and design a model ocean with circular currents.
5. Watersheds: Explore how we impact our water systems and the watersheds that sustain our population. Create a model coastal community and observe how pollutants travel within a watershed
6. Weather & climate: Explore the differences between weather and climate, look at real-time NOAA weather and climate data, experiment with sea level rise, and create coastal resiliency models.

This resource collection from NOAA Education dives into why climate change is happening and how it is impacting different parts of the Earth and society, including food, water, and health. Though we often think about human-induced climate change as something that will happen in the future, it is an ongoing process. Ecosystems and communities in the United States and around the world are being impacted today. 

A rapidly changing climate brings challenges to our underwater parks in ways we have never seen before. Climate-related impacts, like changing weather patterns and storm events, warming seas, ocean acidification, and sea level rise, are becoming more prevalent around the globe. Changes in climate will affect national marine sanctuaries and the overall health of the ocean, which is vital to our quality of life and, ultimately, our survival.

A spherical projection is the best way to view Earth data, simply because Earth is a sphere! When you attempt to make a map of the world flat, certain locations become distorted, appearing bigger or smaller than they actually are. This hands-on activity allows you to explore the idea of Earth data and the difficulty associated with flat maps, and to enjoy the process of making a little globe. Several of Science On a Sphere’s most popular and important datasets are available for printing.

The Redlands Mesa area outside Hotchkiss, Colorado, is particularly at risk to wildfires, but with funding from NOAA’s Environmental Literacy Program, local high school students are taking action to tackle their community’s vulnerability to this hazard.

The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program is an international science and education program that provides students and the public worldwide with the opportunity to participate in data collection and the scientific process, and contribute meaningfully to our understanding of the Earth system and global environment. GLOBE provides grade level-appropriate, interdisciplinary activities and investigations about the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and soil/pedosphere, which have been developed by the scientific community and validated by teachers. GLOBE connects students, teachers, scientists, and citizens from different parts of the world to conduct real, hands-on science about their local environment and to put this in a global perspective.