Joy Proctor - Education Department

Warren Wilson College, Asheville, NC

The Education Department at SERC is the place to be in the summertime.  Down on the docks, there is a glorious view of the Rhode River, the osprey nest and boaters pulling water-skiers.  There are also children on the docks, participating in Estuary Chesapeake, the educational program for fourth graders that the education department is known for by schools all around the area.  The children rotate through stations where they explore blue crabs, oyster communities, water testing, seining and weather and tides.

As an intern in this department, I have been actively engaged in this program, supervising the children and answering questions about the stations.  It’s amazing what I am learning and continue to learn about the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.

There is more going on inside the classroom with the distance-learning program.  This program uses video-conferences, and electronic field trips to expand the learning outside of SERC.  My particular focus project is to design a lesson plan and to gather materials for a video-conference about Blue Crabs.  The video-conferences were particularly fascinating to me the first time I saw how it worked.  With the right technology, classrooms can tune into SERC over phone lines and see and hear SERC scientists while performing labs with the children and answering questions about what we do here at SERC.

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