SAEON Education Outreach

Environmental Science

Blue Schools

What is Blue Schools?

Blue Schools is an International programme, coordinated by NRF-SAEON and funded by the Department of Science and Innovation in South Africa. The programme aims to increase ocean awareness and literacy to ensure that ocean knowledge is translated into action for sustainable oceans. The International Blue Schools Programme is a collaboration between different Blue School networks from countries around the world.

Objectives of the Blue Schools:
  • Contribute towards a network for ocean literacy and ocean awareness that will promote dialogue, scientific and cultural exchange among learners, educators and community members both locally and globally
  • Providing educators and learners an opportunity to showcase the work being done in ocean literacy and ocean awareness on an international scale
  • To enhance marine science skills and competencies in learners
  • Enhancing ocean literacy and awareness in communities through ocean dialogues
 
We have the ocean that connects people from different parts of the world and through the Blue Schools programme learners have the opportunity to learn about the interconnectedness of ocean ecosystems and the impact that human activities have on our ocean. The Blue School Programme provides learners with an opportunity to explore careers such as marine biology, oceanography, environmental conservation, and sustainable resource management.

Who can join Blue Schools?

The Blue School programme is open to all South African learners between grades 6 and 11. 

What you need to do and when?

The educators need to assist with mentoring the learner research projects and providing learners with the activity sheets in this booklet to complete the portfolio activities. 

  • The learners need to complete and submit the portfolio by 11th July 2024. 
  • The final research project submission needs to be emailed by 11 July 2024. 
  • Should your project be shortlisted, you will need to present your projects using slides online on the 30 July 2024.
  • The best performing learners from the Online Competition will be invited to our in-person Blue Schools Conference on 5-7 September 2024.

 Queries for the portfolio activities and research project need to be submitted to education@saeon.nrf.ac.za.

Tell me more about the Research Project!

Learners need to design a research project that is related to the ocean. We encourage learners to collect their data (have a look at the Citizen Science section below). Although, we do understand that sometimes it is not always possible to collect ocean data, and we have provided some resources on where you can find freely available ocean data. 

The research project should also look at whether this research can solve a marine problem and the impact that this research would have. We would also encourage you to take action after you have completed your research project by solving the problem that you have identified

 The final research project needs to be emailed to education@saeon.nrf.ac.za by 11 July 2024.

Resources

All the resources can be found in in this Google Drive folder, or by clicking on the links below. 

Portfolio Booklet

This booklet includes all you need to know about Blue Schools. It includes and introduction to Blue Schools, the portfolio activities and the research report guidelines. 

School Registration Form

Educators, please ensure that you have registered your school. By submitting this completed form to education@saeon.nrf.ac.za.

If your school has at least 10 learners who completed their portfolio activities and quality research projects then we will give your school a Blue School status for one year. 

Portfolio Answer Book

Kindly submit your portfolio activities through Google Forms, if possible (you will find the links and a QR code next to each activity in the Portfolio Booklet). Alternatively, you may submit completed answer booklets via email to education@saeon.nrf.ac.za.

Research Report Template

Learners need to design an individual research project related to the ocean. This template is a Google Doc template for how the research report needs to be set out and will guide you through what needs to be in each section.

Please note: It is “View Only”, so you will first need to save a copy of the document, and then edit the copy. To save a copy to your Google Drive, sign in to your Google account, open the document, and select File → “Make a copy.”
To save it as a Word doc: File -> Download > Mircosoft Word (.docx)

Ethics Form

This will guide you on what is expected of you about the ethics around your project. 

Please complete and sign the ethics declaration and email it to education@saeon.nrf.ac.za.

Watch the video of our online Blue Schools workshop

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