Science Outreach for K-8

Kodiak College Marine Biology Faculty,  Switgard Dusterloh, PhD. worked with young students involved in the Ocean Science Discovery Labs (OSDL). OSDL is a collaborative effort between Kodiak College and Kodiak Island Borough School District science teachers to develop marine science-themed units for K-8 science classes. The Borough funded position allows Dusterloh to lend her scientific expertise to teachers in elementary and middle school science classes to help create interest and awareness in science, create scientific career awareness and hopefully to also encourage college level preparedness in specific content areas of study. These are the long term goals of the partnership, but the shorter term outcomes may be observed on the faces of the students in the photos.

In the snail race, students enticed snails to move with the aid of cotton balls dipped in seaweed juice put at the other end of the tub-the snail that first got there was the winner. The hermit crab bet is really a mini experiment looking at what habitat a hermit crab would prefer. We used a tray with four options (white sand, black sand, blue glass pebbles and red seaweed). The students made their hypotheses and the ones that made correct predictions won a prize. They repeated the game several times (the hermit crab was very consistent in choosing the seaweed each time even if it walked around for a while first).