Page 149 - Sjæklen2010

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Ved at måle sigtedybden kan man få et indtryk af mængden af
alger på en given undersøgelsesstation. F.eks. kan en stor mængde
alger resulterer i en ringe sigtedybde. Sigtedybden måles med en
såkaldt secchiskive. Skiven sænkes ned i vandet til den forsvinder
af syne og vanddybden aflæses på snoren.
project initiated by Rødkilde upper secondary school in
Vejle with financial support from the Danish Ministry of
Education. The aim of the project was to develop environ-
mental monitoring programmes to be used in the biology
course in upper secondary schools. During 2010 the depart-
ment of interpretation at the museum worked out and tested
such a teaching program.
The keyword for the teaching programme is applied
science teaching, and in the programme the students car-
ry out environmental monitoring in the Wadden Sea, with
acti-vities required to characterise and monitor the environ-
ment. In the applied teaching programme, the students use
the same monitoring methods as the Fisheries and Maritime
Museum and the Environment Centre Ribe. The students
monitor the Wadden Sea at the same research locations as
the environment centre – both at sea and on the mudflats.
At sea they examine water quality, and on the mudflats they
study, classify and count the animals in the sediment.
For more than 25 years, Denmark, Germany and the
Netherlands have been working together on cross-border
protection of seals in the Wadden Sea. Under the Trilateral
Seal Management Plan, the three Wadden Sea countries car-
ry out annual harbour seal counts to estimate the size of the
population. The Fisheries and Maritime Museum performs
the counts in the Danish section of the Wadden Sea. In the
applied science teaching programme, the students study
population ecology, counting the number of harbour seals
in pictures taken during one of the counts. In the sealarium
at the museum, the students carry out a behavioural study to
compare the behaviour of the domestic seals at the museum
with that of wild seals.
The applied science teaching program was tested in
2010 with students from Varde upper secondary school and
HF – an upper secondary school near Esbjerg. Testing and
evaluating the programme enabled its refining to a satisfac-
tory level. The final teaching programme will be offered to
students at upper secondary schools from August 2011.
In the future, the museum hopes to be able to modify the
programme so that it also can be used in primary schools
and higher educational institutions.