Island’s Young Scientists Discover Global Audience
There is no telephone system on Anacapa Island. The nearest electrical line is 12 miles away. But on this remote landscape, a rocky plateau encircled by the aquamarine sea, middle school students are giving science lessons, in real time, to more than 1 million of their peers around the world.
The Jason Project, a multimedia science education program founded by Robert D. Ballard -- the oceanographer who discovered the wreck of the Titanic 18 years ago -- has set up camp this year at Channel Islands National Park and marine sanctuary off the Ventura County coast.
Using the dramatic environment of Anacapa Island, a variety of high-tech gadgets, an elaborate interactive Web site and live television, the project aims to engage and inspire teenagers using real scientific research.
Such inspiration is increasingly crucial, Ballard said, as the number of college graduates majoring in science continues to decline, and science test scores in the United States lag behind those of many other countries. He also hopes to improve students’ awareness of environmental matters.
“We want to take the abundance of biological diversity the Channel Islands offers and make it come alive for students so they will learn the importance of protecting these invaluable resources,” Ballard said.
To help do that, the project recruited 28 middle school student “argonauts” from around the country -- including one from Santa Barbara and one from Santa Clarita -- to work with local researchers, NASA scientists and TV producers to create live broadcasts that are fed via satellite to auditoriums and classrooms worldwide, five times a day for 11 days.
On the island, students are diving in kelp forests to keep track of changes in the sea urchin population, studying the National Park Service’s efforts to eradicate nonnative black rats in order to save a rare seabird, and helping test NASA-built remote-control airplanes equipped with video cameras.
“This is the best application of science that I’ve had in my whole life,” said Blake Burckart, 15, an aspiring marine biologist from Arkansas, wriggling out of his scuba gear on the island dock. “We’re learning what real researchers do down there.”
On another part of the island, Angie Violante 14, of Stratford, Conn., holds a UAV -- uninhabited aerial vehicle -- to prepare it for takeoff. The small, electric-powered planes, built by NASA for the Jason Project, are shooting digital video that will be used to monitor the thickness of kelp forests.
Working with NASA scientists has been a thrill for Angie, who has wanted to be an astronaut since she was 6. And she has wanted to be an argonaut since she was 10, when she saw other students on the live broadcast at her school.
The argonauts “were cool, but really smart too,” she said. “I wanted to be just like them.”
From the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, Ballard hosts the program with other student argonauts who perform experiments, test underwater remote-operated vehicles such as the ones Ballard used to find the Titanic, and learn about the culture of the Chumash Indians who once populated the islands.
Also, the project enlisted 20 students from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties -- the Channel Islands argonauts -- who traveled to Anacapa last week for a behind-the-scenes tour of the broadcasts.
They have spent the past few months creating research-based projects and posters that were on display at a lecture Ballard give Wednesday at Buena High School in Ventura.
One of the local participants, Fillmore Middle School seventh-grader Ashton Palmer, said the program has been the highlight of her school career. She got the chance to study cancer in pinnipeds (seals, sea lions and walruses) and to chat online about science with students as far away as New York, she said.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I stepped into,” said Ashton, 12. “I live right here, and I didn’t even know anything about the islands before this.”
The broadcasts shown during the Channel Islands expedition, which ends Friday, build on a curriculum that thousands of teachers in grades five through nine have been using in their classrooms all year.
Lessons have focused on the geography, wildlife, marine life and cultural history of the islands, as well as the connection of the ocean to upstream creeks and rivers. The curriculum meets federal and state education standards for those grade levels, project spokesman Scott Treibitz said.
Although the programs were scripted and rehearsed in the days before the expedition began, there is always room to incorporate current events.
When the space shuttle Columbia broke apart above Texas on Saturday, Ballard started off each of that day’s five broadcasts with a tribute to the seven astronauts who died.
NASA is one of the government agencies that helped fund this year’s $3-million expedition, along with the National Park Service, the National Geographic Society and several private companies.
Ballard said he chose the Channel Islands, in part, to bring increased focus to the nation’s heavily populated coastal zones -- what he calls “the battlefield of society.” This year’s expedition also fits in with his work as a member of the United States Commission on Ocean Policy, which is trying to redefine how oceans are managed.
Awareness of what is out there is an important piece of the puzzle, he said. “There is a major new initiative in this country for marine sanctuaries, which are really underwater parks,” Ballard said. “We’re taking 1 million children under water -- many of them for the first time.”
Doing so is no easy process.
Setting up the Jason production involved two weeks of prep work, 100,000 pounds of equipment, about 15,000 feet of cable wires and dozens of boat trips to the island, co-producer Gray Thompson said.
Microwave dishes on the island and atop the Maritime Museum transmit data across the ocean, giving students on Anacapa access to the Internet, where they update Web journals daily. Satellites connect a mobile production studio at the museum to auditoriums around the country, enabling students to call in with questions.
“We’re doing everything we can to give more people access and to bring these places to a wider audience,” Thompson said.
In Fillmore, teacher Laurie Merrill said the interactive nature of the program and its use of technology have done wonders for her seventh-grade science students, particularly those who are usually difficult to motivate.
“I think this is the way to go, especially for the middle-school age group,” Merrill said last week, following presentations by her students on a Jason Project watershed study they conducted at Sespe Creek. “It’s not enough to just give a kid a book anymore.”
That is precisely the idea behind Jason -- named after the mythical Greek adventurer known for his quest for the Golden Fleece -- which Ballard began in 1989 with a trip to the Mediterranean Sea.
The concept originated from more than 16,000 letters he received after the 1985 expedition that ended in the discovery of the Titanic wreckage. “The letters were from children who were asking, ‘Can I go with you on your next expedition?’ ” Ballard recalled. “I thought we could take that interest and turn it into an interest in science.”
Since then the group has been to Alaska, Peru, Hawaii and Belize, among other places.
Early results of a three-year study show the program is working, said Tim Armour, executive director of the Jason Foundation for Education, the nonprofit group that runs the project.
Jason improves learning by engaging students in a hands-on, multimedia curriculum, the research found. The project also promotes teamwork among students, helps teachers master technology and reduces students’ fear of confronting challenges, according to the study, now in its third year.
More studies are underway to determine whether the Jason Project produces higher scores on achievement tests, Armour said. The program will adapt as needed to provide kids with the best science education, he said.
“All of this is in continual evolution,” Armour said. “We like to think of ourselves as one giant science experiment.”
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For more information on the Jason Project or to view a live broadcast, visit www.jasonproject.org
