Visual Storytelling for Ocean Education (ViSOE)

Marianne Helene Rasmussen, director of the University of Iceland Research Centre in Húsavík, and her colleagues, have received a generous grant to develop an innovative and immersive digital education tool based on visual and personal storytelling from a sailing expedition around the Arctic. The grant is 400,000 Euros, or around 60 million ISK.

This is a European Union Erasmus+ grant for the project "Visual Storytelling for Ocean Education (ViSOE): developing an innovative digital resource to facilitate ocean education training, based on visual, personal stories from an Arctic sailing expedition". 

The main objective of this project is to increase the number of better-resourced teachers with enhanced knowledge and engagement about the ocean.  The learning material will be accessible online and will also be used in teacher education and in professional teacher training courses. The material is designed for 12 - 14-year-old students; in English to begin with, but the aim is to have it translated into different Nordic languages.

I think it is very important to increase the teaching material available about the ocean in Iceland.  In most places in Iceland, you live close to the ocean, and it is thus important that children learn about the ocean and marine life

- says Marianne.

Monitoring killer whales and humpback whales at feeding grounds

The project is a follow-up project from the Arctic Sense project funded by Nordplus (Walk with a whale and see the pollution below the surface of the sea).  “There we used virtual reality to give the students an insight into the lives of whales and the pollution that threatens their existence out at sea. To do this we used, in part, data from the Norwegian sailing expedition vessel Barba. We will not use virtual reality in the new project, however, some of the material will be re-used as some of the people/partners will be the same as in the previous project”, says Marianne.

We will also add material from a research expedition that is about to embark. “Andreas Heide from Barba (barba.no) is leaving for Skervöy in Northern Norway after two weeks and will collect video and material for this project for the next few months where the killer and humpback whales are feeding.  They have borrowed a hydrophone from the University of Iceland Research Centre in Húsavik and will hopefully collect more sound recordings that can be used for the educational material,” says Marianne and adds that the University of Iceland Research Centre staff in Húsavík has worked with Andreas before and material from a past collaboration will be used in the development of the teaching material. 

“ViSOE is a three-year project, carried out in collaboration with the universities in Stavanger and Aarhus, but STEM-Iceland in Húsavík is also a partner. Alyssa Stoller from the Whale Wise team was hired at the research centre in Húsavík for the Nordplus Arctic Sense project, and she will also be engaged in this project,” says Marianne about her colleagues in Iceland.

“We tried the past Nordplus project out at Borgarhólsskóli in Húsavík and at the University of Youth (Háskóli unga fólksins) in June”, Marianne adds and she assumes that the material will be made available to Icelandic schools through the Stem-Iceland network.

Impact on society

Being able to provide the next generation of marine conservationists with exciting educational material is important to us as a society. Igniting young people's curiosity about marine life and the environment helps us preserve it for future generations.