About OceanInsight   Email     Print   PDF

	Enlarge Image WHOI volunteer Rich Minor shares a starfish specimen with a young student from the Perkins School for the Blind. A group from the school toured WHOI in the fall of 2006. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

OceanInsight is a collaboration between Dr. Amy Bower of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts. The oldest school for the blind in the US, Perkins offers accredited K-12 education to over 200 students on campus as well as support to local educational organizations for the blind in over 50 developing countries.

The goals of the collaboration are to communicate the importance of understanding how the earth works, instill the excitement of oceanographic research, and introduce Perkins students to careers in the geosciences that they might not otherwise consider as accessible to them.

Ongoing activities include:

1. interaction with Perkins science teachers to learn how best to present scientific material to their students.
2. hands-on presentations for students and parents on oceanographic topics and oceanography as a career.
3. development of an accessible expedition web site that documents shipboard life throughout the September 2007 Irminger Rings research cruise.