 The Technology Teams will build upon the COSEE Coastal Trends Scientist-Educator Partnership Teams, including incorporating many of the activities, but with a heavier emphasis on the role of technologies and technicians. The COSEE-TEK team has extensive experience leading Teacher-Research Experiences, going back to 1988 with the inception of the Aquanaut Program (AP) that provided hands-on teacher-research experiences using advanced technologies to address real-world research topics (Babb & Scheifele, 1992; Babb, Scheifele & Tedeschi, 1997). An offshoot of the AP was the NSF-funded Classroom of the Sea (COS) that worked with the (ASD in West Hartford, CT and other schools for the Deaf to apply the AP model to enhance science literacy for deaf students (Brown et al., 2002, Lang et al. 2007). In addition, this project addressed the significant issue of communicating science principles and content using American Sign Language (ASL) in the face of the rapidly evolving vocabulary of science and technology.
The COSEE-TEK Technology Team activities will be extended over the course of a year in order to maximize the flexibility to schedule these activities among the team members. Extending the activities will also provide opportunities to reinforce the professional development as well as provide time for reflection and independent research on the science and technology by the educators.
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