Author Archives: oceanlifeeducation

Sunshine Coast Business Awards Finalist 2015

ocean life education a sunshine coast business award finalist 2015

Ocean Life Education is proud to announce it is a Sunshine Coast Business Awards 2015 Finalist!

This is the first time we have entered the awards and are so proud to have been accepted as a Finalist in the prestigious Awards for the Education and Training category. It is wonderful to be recognised for our achievements among the Sunshine Coast business community.

The 2015 Awards program includes business sector awards, tourism sector awards, major awards for key aspects of business performance, an overall business of the year, individual awards and the prestigious Hall of Fame.

“The Awards are designed to recognise and celebrate the efforts and achievements of the diverse and dedicated Sunshine Coast business community” -SC Business Awards

Ocean Life Education is one of five finalists in the Education and Training category, among fellow finalists Demi International Beauty Academy, Gumnuts Childcare, Maleny Credit Union, and Safetywave.

Marine Education Officer and Presenter, Nathan Wynder has also been selected as a Sunshine Coast Business Awards’ Employee of the Year Finalist. Nathan has been with Ocean Life Education for four years and has been a tremendous asset to the team – with his passion for children’s education and a constant willingness to learn and pass his knowledge and love for the environment on to the next generation.

Nathan presenting Ocean Life Discovery program

Nathan presenting the Ocean Life Discovery program.

The submission process has been rigorous starting with an Expression of Interest followed by a phone interview before being accepted to submit a full entry submission. The submission was comprehensive as we had to outline our business strengths, achievements and challenges across five key criteria areas – your business, sales and marketing, customers, team culture, business planning and performance.

The submission was then followed by an in-person panel interview and Richard couldn’t help but take the opportunity to wow the panel with our live marine animals and a bit of humour. Wife and business partner, Tracey was by his side to ensure Richard didn’t get too carried away and kept him focused on the business side of things!

The experience has been valuable, providing the opportunity to reflect on our achievements over the past nine years when it all first began.

Tracey and Richard founded Ocean Life Education as a husband and wife team on the Sunshine Coast in 2006. With passion and purpose they saw a gap in the market and a real need for education for sustainability to be incorporated into children’s education from a young age.

Ocean Life Education will attend the Sunshine Coast Business Awards Gala Event on Saturday 7 November and looks forward to celebrating our achievements with the team and other finalists.

Science Week 2015 Wrap Up

Clayfield College Year 4 student

By Richard Coward

Wow what a Science Week we’ve just had, a fantastic initiative to get kids engaged in all things science.

No better way to love science than to learn all about our amazing marine creatures, why they are important and why we should look after them.

Participating Schools

Some huge thanks go out to Clayfield College, St Joseph’s School Nundah, Parklands Christian College and Brisbane Adventist College for hosting us during Science Week.

Every one of the kids were an absolute pleasure to share knowledge with, they enjoyed the close contact with our animals absorbing all aspects of their existence.

Program learning focus

With volumes of information available about creatures from the sea, the main focus of learning were in there areas of:

Adaptation
Classification
Habitats; and
Human impact

Each school program is extremely engaging and fun to cover, the latter an increasingly important topic within schools as we strive to understand and protect our surrounding environment under the pressure of an ever increasing population.

Memorable moments shared

Visiting these schools provided many memorable moments, too many to share in a short blog post. Here is a small sample from our schools visited this week.

Total participation and enthrallment at explaining why sharks attack humans (Yr 4 Clayfield College)
The fun and challenge of delivering 5 different presentations to every year level throughout the whole school day (P-6 St Josephs)
The thrill and enjoyment on the faces of the Prep children as they interacted with our live animals (Parklands Christian College)
Total engagement of children with good background knowledge and amazing intelligent questions at the presentation’s conclusion. (Yr 1 Brisbane Adventist College)

Invaluable Experience

Science Week provides children the chance to see that science is a fun and cool subject to learn.

It is important to keep encouraging children to pursue science throughout their academic lives and continue to produce creative successful scientists of the future.

Children are often scared off by science and all its jargon, but at Ocean Life Education we break down that barrier, make understanding animals and their natural environment simple and easy to remember. This empowers children and encourages them to dig deeper in search for answers.

Once again we would like to thank the schools who included our incursion into their celebration of Science Week, we look forward to seeing them again in future and encourage all schools to jump on board and enlighten their children towards a brighter scientific future.

We strive to provide an invaluable experience propelling the school kids of today into the scientists of tomorrow.

For great conversation, videos and more, visit the National Science Week website.

To book your next Science Week incursion with Ocean Life Education, contact us.

A Marine Educator following in her fathers’ footsteps

Ocean Life Education presenter, Katie with students at Kids in Action 2014

By Alison Cooper

Being a Marine Education Officer at Ocean Life Education isn’t a job that comes naturally to just anyone. Katie-Anne has been helping us to inspire children and students to care for the environment since 2013 but her passion for environmental education started much earlier in life.

Katie grew up in a community-focused family committed to environmental protection and awareness. Her father, Derek Foster, recently won the Sunshine Coast Council Australia Day Award, Environment, for his continued leadership and advocacy work with local community groups.

Since Katie can remember, her father has been involved with the Maroochy Wetlands Sanctuary in Bli Bli on the Sunshine Coast. At that time he was a Marine Science teacher at Burnside State High School and subsequently the regional Environmental Education consultant. He designed and was central to the establishment of the Sanctuary and the Bilai Environmental Education Centre located within it.

“Dad was always taking me on marine camps, going sailing and canoeing and hanging out down at the Wetlands.

“I suppose you could say this started my love for the environment.”

Derek later worked for the Department of Primary Industries and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research as an Extension Specialist. He took on a role in Asia to coordinate new primary industries ensuring products were suitable for export to Australia and other markets.

“Dad’s job was really interesting particularly working with the aquaculture industry and disease control to make sure their products were safe for our country. I always enjoyed talking to him about his job. It was really cool when Dad got involved in the 2004 Tsunami relief project.”

As well as being a mother of two, Katie wears many hats in addition to being an Ocean Life Education Presenter. Following in her father’s footsteps, Katie is the Education Officer for the Maroochy Wetlands Sanctuary. She is also Gardening Coordinator for Bli Bli State School, and has developed her own unique Environmental Music program which she runs during school holidays through the Sunshine Coast Council.

“I love my job with Ocean Life Education as we’re always supporting different events and community initiatives to teach marine conservation. Last year, Dad and I got to work on the same project with the Kids in Action Conference run through the Council which was pretty cool.”

Pictured: Richard (middle) with Derek (right) and Michael Gilles from SCC at the 2014 Kids in Action Environment Day.

In 2014, Ocean Life Education delivered the Rocky Foreshores activity as part of the Sunshine Coast Kids in Action Environmental Projects Day.

Katie’s Dad was also there on behalf of the Maroochy Wetlands Sanctuary delivering the Explore Estuarine Ecosystems activity where he took kids fishing and discussed the importance of mangroves in fish lifecycles as a breeding ground.

“It’s pretty cool when you can share the same passion for the environment with your Dad.

“The Sunshine Coast has a great network of community groups working to protect the environment in which we live and I really enjoy being a part of that. It’s even better when you can follow in your Dad’s footsteps doing a job you love passing on the knowledge you have to the next generation.”

Pictured: Ocean Life Education’s Rocky Foreshore program at Kids in Action 2014

Ocean Life Education will be back with the Kids in Action group again in August this year delivering the Rocky Foreshores program at Point Cartwright and Shelly Beach.

For more information about Kids in Action, visit the Sunshine Coast Council’s website.

If you have an event you would like us to be involved in, visit our Events Program page.

Why our approach to curriculum connection has never been so important

By Richard Coward

Understanding our surrounding environment, our impact upon it and why we need to protect it has never been more important.

Fortunately, the Australian Curriculum is moving toward an improved coverage of key concepts and understanding within biological and Earth sciences across all primary year levels.

Ocean Life Education offers a fantastic opportunity for teachers to use our programs as a learning resource that is engaging, providing meaningful interactive learning whilst linking to related curriculum modules.

Our approach, is to bring key concepts together giving students a better understanding of the bigger picture.

We help students understand animals and their given habitat, how they differ from other animals, why they look and feel the way they do, what their importance is to the environment they live in, what problems humans create for them and why we need to look after them and their habitats.

For example, sea stars have a tough flat body to protect them from their harsh habitat (the shallow foreshore). They belong to a group of animals called ‘Echinoderms’ as they have tube feet and pump water around their body not blood to keep them alive. The sea stars eat algae and dead animals off the ocean floor, keeping it clean and healthy. If we pollute the water, sea stars will struggle to survive in their habitat. The problem lies in that if our human impacts result in dying sea stars, we lose an important cleaner of the ocean floor, resulting in a complexity of negative effects.

We take the approach of helping students to understand these cause and effect links to help keep our environment clean – to ensure the animals’ survival, and ours.

We deliver school programs that provide alignment with the Australian Curriculum Science strands: Science Understanding for Biological Science and Earth & Space Sciences, as well as Science as a Human Endeavour.

Using live marine animals, we provide a unique depth of engagement and understanding.

Our marine science incursions are a truly rewarding and refreshing way for students to learn key concepts set out by the national curriculum.

Visit our school programs page for a range of available programs.