Expedition Details (back)

JASON's year-long curriculum comes to life during our annual expedition! Each year, Dr. Ballard leads a team of scientists, students and teachers on a two-week journey to explore and study in research locations featured in the curriculum. Satellite and Internet technologies bring students in classrooms around the world into direct, real-time contact with scientists and researchers as the expedition is happening.

JASON expeditions have ventured to the Mediterranean Sea, the Great Lakes, the Galapagos Islands, the Sea of Cortez, Belize, Hawai'i, the coral reefs of Florida's Keys, Yellowstone National Park, Iceland, Bermuda, Monterey Bay, the Peruvian rainforest, and NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Students and their teachers have participated with research scientists in deep sea archaeology; probed the changing conditions of unique ecosystems; compared shallow and deep ocean habitats; pondered the mysteries of chemosynthetic life forms; studied bio-diversity, plate tectonics and volcanoes, geo-thermal hot spots, glaciology, human and animal migration; and compared conditions experienced in space and under the oceans.

Components

• videos provide visual and auditory information on module's topics
• teach a whole concept
  • common example poses a research question such as "why are the poles so cold", then presents information from experts and from experiments, and enables the learner to form an answer to the research question
• transcripts allow for review of key points

• links to outside sources for information related to the concepts in a module
• encourage exploration outside of JASON and the application and expansion of knowledge learned within JASON

• boards for students and teachers
• students can formulate scientific questions and participate in discussion topics
• students build relationships online
• teachers can find hints on how to implement JASON

• teachers receive paper workbooks when they enroll in JASON and these are all available for reprint on the website
• project-based learning and concept-oriented problems for students to solve

• well-designed questions can promote learning

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