A Miracle Journey and a Multi Educational Project

The students at the Kilglass National School, Galway, deployed a 1.5 metre unmanned mini sailboat called 'Seoltóir Na Gaillimhe – the Galway Sailor', in June 2021 and it was recently found stranded on the isolated Bunes Beach above the Arctic Circle in the Lofoten Islands, in Norway, by the Bjørnsen family while exploring the island on holiday... that's 3,000kms !!!

The mini boat project is part of an international programme by Educational Passages and the school are grateful for the support from Marine Institute and the Explorers Education Project.

As part of the programme, the students also worked on projects on the Ocean Literacy Framework ...

There are seven Ocean Literacy principles and the complementary Scope and Sequence is comprised of 28 conceptual flow diagrams. The Ocean Literacy principles remain a work in progress; they reflect our efforts to date defining ocean literacy.

• Ocean Literacy Principle #1: The Earth has one big ocean with many features.
• Ocean Literacy Principle #2: The ocean and life in the ocean shape the features of Earth.
• Ocean Literacy Principle #3: The ocean is a major influence on weather and climate.
• Ocean Literacy Principle #4: The ocean made the Earth habitable.
• Ocean Literacy Principle #5: The ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems.
• Ocean Literacy Principle #6: The ocean and humans are inextricably interconnected.
• Ocean Literacy Principle #7: The ocean is largely unexplored.

These Ocean Literacy Principles are correlated to the National Science Education Standards (NSES) Science Content Standards.

You can read up on the full story from Marine Institute HERE and if you want to organise your own Educational Passage head over to HERE.

Thank you to Mr Lars Bjørnsen and Andrew Downes for the photographs.