This is the question that we at the Sea World Education Centre have been asked about our most recent teachers' workshops. Well, first you need to have an exciting venue that people want to visit - Sea World, the aquarium and dolphinarium in Durban houses one of the most varied and interesting arrays of living marine animals in South Africa. Dolphins, seals, penguins, sharks, and hundreds of fish and invertebrates all make Sea World a great place to visit. Then you add a large team of enthusiastic educators with many years of experience in outcomes based and marine education. Design a stimulating and varied programme, find a generous sponsor, add to that a free lunch and you have all you need to encourage teachers to attend your Saturday workshops.

 

Sea World has recently held a number of workshops designed specifically for teachers. The workshops were designed to be outcomes based and took our teachers on an ocean journey through both the physical and the biological marine world. The first day covered physical oceanography and looked at topics such as wind and density driven ocean currents, tides, properties of water and at features of the beach and coast. On the second Saturday we looked at the biological side of things and investigated the overexploitation of our linefish resources, pollution, fish biology and ecology.

 

Because of the popularity of the first two-day workshop, held in November 2000 and attended by 120 teachers, the workshop was repeated in February 2001 with another 60 teachers. Due to the huge demand, we decided not to advertise either workshop. Teachers of all learning areas and from all grades attended the workshop. Many of the teachers came from very poor areas and we even had teachers from as far afield as Port St. Johns, Sodwana Bay and Johannesburg at the workshop.

 

With the exception of introductory lessons and a few demonstrations, all of the activities were done in small groups. The teachers were given plenty of time to do the experiments and activities themselves, and to ask questions. This helped to ensure that the participants were made aware of the role of marine science in people's daily lives. We utilised all of the facilities available at Sea World, ensuring that the workshop was unique, interesting and lots of fun.

Through these workshops we hope to introduce not only the teachers, but also many more children, to the wonders of our oceans and to the role that marine science plays in our daily lives.

Enough of what we thought - what were the teachers' comments?

"Thank-you for two days of fun, inspiration, shared knowledge and enthusiasm. We enjoyed the course thoroughly and learned a great deal, not only information, but also lesson presentation, fascinating and easy experiments and useful ideas and personal experience. Your dedication and love for the ocean and marine life is evident in all that you did for us, leading us along on our 'voyage' and the enthusiasm was infectious. We all left feeling richer, more motivated and filled with respect and fascination for the marine environment that you helped us to re-discover."

 

"All educators need to be empowered with this experience"

"Even if you are not a Natural Science teacher you can integrate your teaching through this workshop."

"We were made to discover ourselves not just lectured to. "

"Excellent format, varied activities, informed guides, fascinating subject, what more could we want."

"I think this should be included in schools curriculum. The government should be involved in this interesting knowledge and skills."

"The workshop was well organised and the material up to date. The staff was friendly and supportive. A job really well done."

"The most valuable were the easy and cost effective 'experiments / demonstrations' that can be used in the classroom."

"Extremely amazing how knowledge can be put forward in such a simple manner."

"I gained knowledge that I didn't know. The way experiments were conducted impressed me. The use of resources that are cheap and easy available is in line with outcomes based education."

"Die mannier hulle onderwys is baie profesionalle en goed."

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