Graduate school of Oceanography partners with Central Falls school district to build mini boat
Inspiration, a boat constructed by URI students and students from Central Falls, set sail on the Atlantic Ocean on March 26. PHOTO CREDIT: uri.edu
The Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) at the University of Rhode Island sent a five-foot boat called Inspiration out to sea on March 26.
The boat was uncrewed and was created with a program called Educational Passages which creates kits so grade-school students can create the boats.
“It is very simple, it’s five-foot long, it has a small, rigid sail and the way it’s designed is that currents will move it and the wind will move it,” Peter Hanlon, director of public engagement at the GSO, said.
The boat was made in collaboration with students from the Central Falls School System, with children ranging in age from elementary to high school.
According to Hanlon, the elementary students, who were in 3rd grade, worked on tasks such as painting the boat, while high school students helped do more with the computer programming of the boat and adding to the technical aspects like the gps tracker.
“We’re really starting to introduce science concepts like this,” Hanlon said, in reference to why they chose 3rd graders to assist on the project. “It’s really great to have hands-on activities, as opposed to conceptual science.”
The boats are used as an educational tool, but can also get basic data from the sea such as water temperature, air temperature and the pitch to see how stormy the water is. This is all important for the students of Central Falls to see so they can follow live active water data.
Both Hanlon and Gingras said that the students from Central Falls were excited to make the boats and retained most of the information on how to make the boats.
GSO students went to classrooms and helped with the building and the structuring of the boats, another thing that excited the students.
“They were excited to build something and do hands-on activities and any time we walked in they were really excited to see us and eager to learn more,” Gingras said.
According to Hanlon, Central Falls was chosen due to its underrepresentation in the state, as it is a small city that is often ranked low in the public school system. The GSO has previously worked with Central Falls students on another boat, Square Mile, which was named after the size of the town that set sail in October.
According to Andrea Gingras, assistant director of public engagement at the GSO, Educational Passages is a group that spikes interest in the ocean for young students.
“The program itself connects students to the ocean by using the mini boat as the vehicle,” Gingras said.
Both Inspiration and Square Mile are currently in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and can be tracked on the Education Passages Website.
Hanlon and Gingras said that one of the hopes is that it will help students connect with people across the world, such as people with educational passages that are tracking the boats on the GPS, as well as people in places where the boat may land on the other side of the world.
With both of the boats being popular with students of both the GSO and Central Falls, Hanlon sees the GSO continuing to work with Educational Passages for years to come.