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Learn from home with Ocean School!
We've combed through Ocean School to put together a few weeks of our favourite materials. There's an educational video and a student activity for each week day.
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Schedule
Note: Students will need access to a tablet or computer with internet access.
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Week 1
Monday
Week 1Sharks are awesome
360° video | 3 minutes
Description: Sharks have survived in the ocean for millions of years - from the time of the dinosaurs! Let’s take a 360° view of sharks and the adaptations that make them so amazing. How can we help these awesome creatures face the challenges to come?
Activity | 30 minutes
Description: Students are invited to develop a superhero comic for sharks which demonstrates their amazing adaptations.
Tuesday
Week 1CSI: Cod Stock Investigation
Video | 4.5 minutes
Description: Holly dissects two cod, searching for a deeper understanding of the species. At a traditional fishing shack, Holly fillets a cod for eating. At the Marine Institute in St. John’s, Holly helps conduct a scientific “fish autopsy,” discovering secrets about the cod’s eggs, ears and more…
Activity | 20-40 minutes
Description: Students become detectives and create a case file which presents everything you can learn about a cod when you dissect it.
Wednesday
Week 1Anatomy of a cod
Interactive experience | 20 minutes
Description: Sharpen your virtual knives! During this interactive experience, students will dissect a cod, discovering its deeper anatomy and the secrets of its health.
Activity | 120 minutes
Description: Data analysis: Students are given a data set from a cod dissection and are led through a variety of data analysis tasks which explore the relationship between a fish’s health, reproduction and sustainability.
Thursday
Week 1Put the quest in questions
Video | 2 minutes
Description: How can you ask the most powerful questions, in order to unlock an even wider universe of knowledge? And why is the choosing of a simple word (like "How" or "Why") the key to your greatest quest and your greatest question?
Activity | 60-120 minutes
Description: Students are invited to generate questions inspired by videos. After, they categorize the types of questions they’ve posed, and discuss what qualities distinguish questions that promote further inquiry.
Friday
Week 1How to build a submarine
Video | 3 minutes
Description: How do we explore the deep open ocean? With a submarine! Join Sergio and Boris for a tour of the Deepsee submarine from sub pilot Shmulik Bloom. He explains how the parts of the submarine allow us to move, film, and breathe under the sea!
Activity | 30 minutes
Description: Students are invited to imagine their own robo-sub using provided parts, and label their diagrams with the types of technology their submersible would use to gather data on habitats and species.
Bonus!
Week 1
Where's Whaledo
App | 10 minutes
Description: You’ve never watched a whale this closely! Invite a virtual Right Whale into your room, built to an amazing scale… Reach out and discover every detail of this mighty mammal, all the way from its blowhole to its flukes!
Activity | 120 minutes
Description: Make a whale to scale! Students are challenged to create a 2D whale in their gym or classroom using recycled materials.
Week 2
Monday
Week 2All around the oyster farm
360° video | 1.5 minutes
Description: Malpeque Bay is home to one of the tastiest oysters in the world! Explore an oyster farm here — from point-of-harvest to conveyor belt — in 360° panorama!
Activity | 10 minutes
Description: Career reflection! Students are asked to reflect on being an oyster farmer. They are challenged to think about how future changes to the ocean and climate could impact this career.
Tuesday
Week 2Ulva overload
Video | 5 minutes
Description: Human activity can have an effect on marine ecosystems, in cascading ways. What is the correlation between the farming of a PEI potato and the overabundance of ulva (sea lettuce) in Malpeque Bay? Further, how might the ulva be choking out the bay’s eelgrass: a habitat critical for so many species? Ultimately, it’s all a matter of balance.
Activity | 30 minutes
Description: Drama and storyboarding: Students are invited to get creative and write a dialogue between the ulva and the eelgrass that summarizes how humans affect each species and how they affect each other.
Wednesday
Week 2Bay watch
Interactive experience | 30 minutes
Description: During this interactive experience, students will explore how changes to certain variables impact the health of eelgrass in Malpeque Bay, and therefore the survival of other species in the habitat. Students will use the data they collect during the experience to create data visualizations, then share their work with friends and classmates.
Activity | 120 minutes
Description: Students are given the data they have collected during the interactive and are led through a variety of data analysis tasks which explore the relationships between nutrients and other variables in the environment.
Thursday
Week 2Grocery shopping for whales
Video | 4 minutes
Description: Anisha sets sail with Andrew, in order to get to the bottom of the Bay of Fundy’s food chain. Anisha discovers three quick links which make up this chain: from foundational phytoplankton, to tiny crustacean copepods, to mighty whales. Every creature must eat to survive, and their underwater food chain is what binds the ocean together.
Activity | 30 minutes
Description: Food chain challenge! Students are asked to imagine what food they would eat if they had to eat the same thing everyday. They are then challenged to create a food chain from source to table for that food and compare the food chain with that of a right whale.
Friday
Week 2Netukulimk
Video | 2 minutes
Description: This animation is a history of cod, as inspired by Mi’kmaw storytelling tradition. Little Fish inherits the history of her species from the tales of her Grandmother: from creation, through thousands of years of “Netukulimk” (harmony with nature), to modern industrial devastation. As Little Fish becomes a Grandmother herself, she continues this oral tradition with a renewed hope for the future… and for the return of “Netukulimk”.
Activity | 60-120 minutes
Description: Students are invited to create a fort and/or survival plan of what they would need to survive. They can only take from the earth and land and must consider factors like season, weather and local habitat and ecosystem.
Bonus!
Week 2
Fly ROPOS
App | 30 minutes
Description: Take the plunge! Students pilot the ROPOS in their very own underwater adventure. Working together as a team, student groups will fly the ROPOS through a virtual environment, gathering deep-sea samples and data along the way. Explore further! Gather more!
Activity | 120 minutes
Description: Data analysis! Students document their species identification data from the ROPOS activity, and create graphs to learn about the relationships between species and their habitats.
Week 3
Monday
Week 3To the continental shelf ... and beyond!
Video | 4.5 minutes
Description: In the immense vastness of the Pacific Ocean, a small island off the coast of Costa Rica provides a safe haven for marine species who make grueling migrations through this gigantic ecosystem. Cocos Island is an extinct volcano where life has flourished and provided a sanctuary for species such as sharks, turtles, and dolphins. It’s like an open sea laboratory and the perfect place for Sergio and Boris to study the migratory habits of the animals that come to this otherwise uninhabited island.
Activity | 20 minutes
Description: Describing scale and distance! We know the Pacific Ocean is big, but just how big is it? Students use numeric data to get a feel for the areas, distances, and depths described in our adventure to Cocos Island.
Tuesday
Week 3On the island
360° video | 3 minutes
Description: Migrations across the ocean are often grueling journeys that can last for weeks or even months. These treks require large stores of energy that many species get from feeding at places like Cocos Island. Observe how valuable nutrients from the land nourish a wide range of animals in the ocean.
Activity | 75 minutes
Description: Create a VR tour! Students are given a series of 360° photos to build their own VR tour. They are prompted to add their learning into the tour via information points or narration.
Wednesday
Week 3Seamount science
Video | 4.5 minutes
Description: Studying a place like the open ocean is not easy. For one, it’s deep. Really deep. And that makes getting there extremely difficult. But Sergio and Boris need to reposition a lost acoustic receiver at the seamount of Las Gemelas. But it’s down much further than they could ever go in scuba gear. Time to launch the submarine. The DeepSee submersible is designed to take Sergio and Boris deeper than they’ve ever been before.
Activity | 20 minutes
Description: Caption it! Students take a screenshot from the video that illustrates an interesting moment, then explain why they found it interesting.
Thursday
Week 3Secret life of sharks
Video | 6 minutes
Description: Sergio and Boris are preparing to enter the shark-filled waters of Cocos Island as Alex Hearn and Randall explain the different tagging systems and how they work. As the team goes over the final preparations before the dive, Alex demonstrates how to physically tag the sharks when close.
Activity | 30 minutes
Description: Choose your tagging strategy! Students use information about the strengths, weaknesses, and costs of different tagging technologies to decide which ones they would use to study the scalloped hammerhead.
Friday
Week 3Powerful observations
360° video | 10 minutes
Description: Choose your own adventure on Cocos Island. This 360 video allows you to use your powers of observation and seek out things that lead to all new environments. Will it be in the sky? Or on the land? Or even below the water. You get to explore by activating your learning skills and making powerful observations.
Activity | 60-120 minutes
Description: Field observation! Students are invited to activate their observation skills in this interactive 360 experience. They visit the rainforest and the waters of Cocos island and are challenged to deeply observe and describe 2 environments. Following the 360 experience, they prepare their own field journals.
Bonus!
Week 3Dive detectives is a new VR experience!
Dive detectives
Interactive experience | 30 minutes
Description: Take the plunge! Dive in the waters around Cocos Island in the rainy and dry seasons to observe the wildlife. What are they doing here? Collaborate in a virtual scavenger hunt to discover information about different species who frequent Cocos Island and why the seamount habitat matters to them.
Activity | 120 minutes
Description: Conservation vision! Students use the evidence they collect in the VR experience to craft an argument about why Cocos Island needs protection. They develop a persuasive creative product to promote their vision for the future of Cocos Island.
Marine Migration
This week's materials feature content from the new Marine Migration module! Learn more 
Week 4
Monday
Week 4Where do babies come from?
Video | 4.5 minutes
Description: This video takes a close look at nursery areas — special areas where young animals are born. The mangroves are vital nursery grounds for hammerheads, and beaches are critical areas for sea turtle nesting. How can we identify and protect these important places?
Activity | 90 minutes
Description: Students are asked to make a game to play that will teach others about the perils faced by a white tipped shark OR a green sea turtle.
Tuesday
Week 4Nautical network
Video | 6 minutes
Description: Studying a migratory species like scalloped hammerhead sharks is a challenging, long-range mission. Sergio returns from a dive with a recovered receiver. Guided by marine biologists Alex Hearn and Elpis Chavis, the team downloads and deciphers the data. Alex explains how the receivers collect data, and how scientists combine receiver data with other information to paint a more complete picture of species migratory patterns.
Activity | 75 minutes
Description: Students use Google Earth and a real-life shark tracking data set to compare the movement of 2 sharks over time.
Wednesday
Week 4Shark tagging 360°
360° video | 3 minutes
Description: One of the only ways we’re able to know where sharks and other marine life go when they leave Cocos Island is by tagging them with acoustic or satellite tags. These tags allow us to track their movements and give us a more accurate picture of the pathways some of these endangered species follow. If we can figure out where these animals go in the open ocean we can extend our protection efforts beyond just Cocos Island.
Activity | 90 minutes
Description: Students research the pros and cons of shark tagging before embarking on a lively debate!
Thursday
Week 4Guardians of Cocos Island
360° video | 3.5 minutes
Description: Cocos Island National Park is a national conservation area with strict fishing restrictions and protections. But illegal, unreported, and unsustainable harvesting is still happening. We’ll explore why illegal fishing continues, and what the rangers are doing to stop it.
Activity | 45 minutes
Description: Students create a plan to protect a natural area close to home!
Friday
Week 4Take Action
Video | 1 minute
Description: Ready to take action? Migratory species need knowledgeable defenders to protect their critical habitats and migratory pathways. What can you do to make a difference?
Activity | 60-120 minutes
Description: Students create a project to raise awareness about the conservation of migratory species.
Bonus!
Week 4Tour the Argo
360° video | 4.5 minutes
Description: The Argo is one of the most state-of-the-art-research vessels on the planet. Let Sergio take you on a guided tour of this extraordinary ship and see some of the technology used on their mission to the open ocean.
Activity | 30 minutes
Description: Students are asked to reflect on the skills necessary for one job on the Argo and use a provided template to create a “Now hiring” poster.
Marine Migration
This week's materials feature content from the new Marine Migration module! Learn more 
Week 5 NEW!
Monday
Week 5Balancing act
Video | 5 minutes
Description: For millennia, the Haíɫzaqv have depended on the seasonal cycles that bring ocean resources to the coast. Every generation learns to harvest in a sustainable way. But now these resources are dwindling. And it's up to us—all of us—to work together to put things back in balance.
Activity | 30 min
Description: Students learn more about c̓isḷa—the act of looking after and taking care of something important. Students then create a comic that illustrates people taking care of and giving back to nature.
Tuesday
Week 5Generational branch
Video | 6.5 minutes
Description: The herring’s return to the coast in the spring marks the Haíɫzaqv new year! Celebrate with Jordan and the community, as they share how the Haíɫzaqv collect herring eggs without harming a single fish!
Activity | 30 min
Description: Students create a scrapbook that illustrates what they’ve learned from their family or friends.
Wednesday
Week 5The trap and the gift
Video | 5 minutes
Description: With the help of a local Haíɫzaqv archeologist, Jordan visits an ancient salmon trap. We then take to the seas to try a more modern method of bringing in the catch. Finally, it's party time! We're invited along to Salmon Fest, where the entire community celebrates this life-giving gift.
Activity | 30 min
Description: Students explore the concepts of reciprocity and reciprocal relationships through real-life examples. Students then develop a concept map to show what "giving back" to nature can look like.
Thursday
Week 5One fish, two fish, dead fish, new fish
Video | 5 minutes
Description: We're following the underwater trail of hundreds of thousands of salmon returning to the stream where they were born. With his clicker by his side, Jordan is tallying salmon both living and dead—every one a crucial part of this intersection of land and sea.
Activity | 90 min
Description: Students are challenged to conduct a survey of a species in a nearby habitat, using similar methods to those shown in the video.
Friday
Week 5Watching the watchman
360° video | 3.5 minutes
Description: Take an immersive boat ride with Guardian Watchman Jordan Wilson! Jordan plumbs the depths for data—gathering observations and traditional knowledge—to inform marine protection and management throughout the Central Coast… and you’re right there, along with him!
Activity | 40 min
Description: Students learn about the cultural significance of different carved poles in Haíɫzaqv culture, including the Watchmen poles. Then, they write about the knowledge, skills and values that a watchman must have.
Alert: Many images belong to particular people, nations, families, or clans. Don’t use designs, symbols or crests without permission. Please note that the colours of Haíɫzaqv poles are culturally significant, protected knowledge. Please do not colour in the images of the poles.
Bonus
Week 5Moments of mindfulness
360° video | 2 minutes
Description: Follow Boris beneath the waves, and float inside a beautiful kelp forest. No matter where you turn your head, you’ll be surrounded by cool blue water and lush, undulating algae. Don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for a bobbing pod of seals!
Activity | 60-120 min
Description: Students reflect on their experience under the water when watching the 360° video. Next, they practice mindful breathing with two provided “breathing boards.”
All of the media and activities in “The Harvest” were developed and validated with Haíɫzaqv educators and community leaders, and Haíɫzaqvḷa fluent speakers.
Week 6 NEW!
Monday
Week 6Something fishy about the forest
Video | 5 minutes
Description: Something fishy is going on! This is one of the richest temperate rainforests in the world. How does it stay that way? Enter fish fertilizer! Jordan joins a research team to investigate the role of dead fish in life on land!
Activity | 45 min
Description: Students explore the role of nitrogen in stream systems. Then, they use what they’ve learned to predict which stream system will have the most salmon and attract predators.
Tuesday
Week 6Picking flowers for science
360° video | 2 minutes
Description: Welcome to Allison Dennert’s world! As an ecologist, Allison is studying how salmon can affect meadows and plants through nutrient cycling. Pull on your hip-waders and mush through the marsh, alongside Allison and her team, as she gives you the full 360-degree picture!
Activity | 60 min
Description: Students interview an adult about their career and then reflect on their own career goals.
Wednesday
Week 6Herring census
Video | 6 minutes
Description: We're diving for data! With the help of an “eye in the sky” and some savvy scuba surveyors, researchers are estimating the number of herring in the water... by counting their eggs! But modern methods can only tell us so much. To get the full picture, we turn to the people who know the herring best.
Activity | 75 min
Description: Students are challenged to determine which herring stock will most likely have a healthy population in the future! Students perform a herring census using a simplified version of the methods used by scientists at Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
Thursday
Week 6A change of scale
Video | 4.5 minutes
Description: Jordan climbs aboard the herring fishing boat, Windward Isle. Today, the crew are collecting research samples to send to Fisheries and Oceans Canada. They’re putting together a big-picture view of herring stocks along the Central Coast. But is the big picture actually the complete picture? Learn why the local Guardian Watchmen are conducting more studies, just a short boat ride away.
Activity | 75 min
Description: Students analyze maps and graphs to determine which herring populations will be at risk if the herring fishery opens.
Friday
Week 6Spot the spawn
360° video | 3 minutes
Description: Have you ever wanted to pilot a plane? Well, here’s your chance! Experience an aerial survey from the cabin of a small-craft airplane. Watch in 360° as the surveyors search for signs of herring spawn from the air—important information to be shared with the test fishery and Haíɫzaqv community. Climb aboard, and spot the spawn!
Activity | 75 min
Description: Student synthesize Haíɫzaqv environmental observations and aerial survey data to predict and map where the herring spawn is happening!
Bonus
Week 6Wán̓ái (herring) chronicles
Interactive | 7 minutes
Description: This timeline highlights the Haíɫzaqv’s long relationship with herring, which has sustained them for thousands of years. Learn about the Haíɫzaqv’s struggle to win back their rights to manage the herring through legal challenges, perseverance, and the spirit of ǧviḷás.
Activity | 45 min
Description: Students create a postcard that captures the details of one event in the Wán̓ái chronicles timeline.
All of the media and activities in “The Harvest” were developed and validated with Haíɫzaqv educators and community leaders, and Haíɫzaqvḷa fluent speakers.