Good News - Our Flash interactives are back (sort of)
As of 9/15/2021, we have been able to revive several of our most popular Flash animations. They are not guaranteed to work forever, but if they still work for you, hopefully you can still use these interactives in your classroom.
- The Food Web Game
- Oceanography Through Time
- Fish Diversity: From the intertidal to the abyss
- Larval Fish Matching Game
- From our unit on the Microbial Loop:
Thank You for the Adventure!
In 2002, we launched the COOL Classroom website to address "the need for innovative materials that provide educators with the knowledge and skills they need to develop scientific literacy in their students."
The site was cutting-edge for it's time, using interactive Flash animations and videos to introduce students to some of the first real-time datasets from Coastal Ocean Observing Systems, including the LEO-15 Observatory, which went in the water in the mid 1990's, and the Rutgers University Coastal Ocean Observation Lab, which was founded shortly after.
What COOL Classroom Was
The first version of the site included lessons that investigated satellite Sea Surface Temperatures and Coastal Ocean Radar surface current maps. It also included the biology-focused Gone Fishing project and it's widely popular Food Web Challenge interactive. These interdisciplinary projects were designed to "capitalize on students' natural fascination with the marine environment to improve basic skills training, problem solving, and critical thinking skills."
Between 2008 and 2013, we launched a new version of the site, with new data-focused adventures on the Hudson River Plume, Spatial Literacy and Sea Bass Migrations.
Over the years, we know of hundreds of classrooms and thousands of students that have been able to learn about Ocean Observing Systems thanks to this site. As a result, teachers have been able to use our real-world, or rather, real-ocean data activities to develop their students' scientific reasoning and data literacy skills.
Sadly, technology has moved on. While ocean observing systems have grown more advanced, becoming critical assets for improving our understanding of the ocean and climate system, the COOL Classroom site has not been able to keep up.
With the sunset of browser support for Flash interactives this year, most of the lessons on this site are now no longer functional. Because of this, and the limited support available to refresh the site, we have decided to take it offline.
What's Next?
If you're looking for newer educational resources on ocean observing systems, we encourage you to check out our recent projects, including:
Twenty years is a long run for any project, and we are grateful that the COOL Classroom site has been positively received by so many K-12 educators over this time. We would especially like to thank the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation for their support that made this site possible.
Here's to the next ocean data adventure!
Janice McDonnell & Sage Lichtenwalner
Rutgers University, April 20, 2021