CMM31 – Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

Fictitious forces (4/5): Coriolis – how not to teach it

mglessmer — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 09:25:54 +0000

Some demonstrations are really not as clever as we thought they might be. We have talked about how to teach aspects of the Coriolis force recently, and just to spice it up: here is one thing that I tried that totally didn’t work out. The idea was to have one student slowly and steadily turn a […]

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Concept maps II

mglessmer — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 05:43:56 +0000

A couple of pointers on how to use concept maps in class. I recently presented concept maps as a tool both here and in a workshop I co-taught. And I was pleasantly surprised by how many people said that they were considering employing this tool in their class! So for those of you who might […]

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Concept maps

mglessmer — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 06:29:41 +0000

Drawing concept maps at the beginning, the middle and the end of the course. Using concept maps in teaching is something that I first tried last year in both the GEOF130 and CMM31 courses. The idea is that coming in, students typically don’t have a very good overview over the topics and concepts that are […]

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Oceanographic concepts and language (part 3)

mglessmer — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 05:02:28 +0000

What level of proficiency do you need to communicate about science? This post is not strictly about oceanography, but I started thinking about it in the context of a class I taught recently, where I was teaching in a foreign language to me and most of the students. After one of the classes, a student […]

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Oceanographic concepts and language (part 1)

mglessmer — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 04:59:11 +0000

About teaching in a language that is a foreign language for both your students and yourself. Most of my teaching so far has happened in English to mainly non-native English speakers with the occasional native speaker thrown in. One thing that I realized recently was that concepts that are definitely not common knowledge at home […]

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Mediterranean outflow

mglessmer — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 03:41:34 +0000

Students demonstrating the mediterranean outflow in a tank. As reported earlier, students had to conduct experiments and present their results as part of CMM31. Niklas chose to demonstrate the mediterranean outflow – warm and salty water leaving the Mediterranean and sinking to a couple of kilometer’s depth in the Atlantic Ocean. Since I happened to be […]

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Rogue waves in a bath tub

mglessmer — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 04:38:47 +0000

Trying to create rogue waves in the bath tub of the infamous “red house”. As a part of their projects, students in the CMM31 in Isafjördur course had to conduct an experiment, document and interpret it. One of the students, Silvia, chose to create rogue waves in the bath tub of the “red house”, one […]

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Hydrothermal springs

mglessmer — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 03:55:11 +0000

Hydrothermal springs that you can visit without a deep-sea submersible. When teaching about hydrothermal springs, I usually use a video a friend of mine took of hydrothermal vents on the mid-Atlantic ridge on the WHOI submersible Alvin. But being on Iceland now, there is much better material available which students can even go and experience […]

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On drawing on the board by hand in real time

mglessmer — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 04:48:26 +0000

Drawing by hand on the board in real time rather than projecting a finished schematic? It is funny. During my undergrad, LCD projectors were just starting to arrive at the university. Many of the classes I attended during my first years used overhead projectors and hand-written slides, or sometimes printed slides if someone wanted to […]

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Why do we get an Ekman spiral?

mglessmer — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 03:44:55 +0000

Visualizing an Ekman spiral using a deck of cards. To state this right upfront: this post will not explain why the surface layer is moving at a 45 degree angle to the wind direction, and if anyone has a great idea for a simple demo for that please let me know! It will also not […]

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