THALASSA dedicated the first week of April to develop an experiential education workshop with middle school students coming from Paris region.
In collaboration with F93 (www.f93.fr), an association for scientific and technical culture, we prepared a workshop at Îles de Lérins, Cannes, south of France entitled “the discover of marine habitats through hands on experience”.
In total, 72 students from 4 different Middle Schools were introduced to the concept of scientific method through hands on experience classes, i.e. students learned how to follow a scientific reasoning by doing it rather than just reading about it or seeing it being done.
They learned the concept of habitat and explored the marine habitats present in the study site (e.g. rock pools, water column). They had to reason why and how some organisms can live in one habitat and not in another. These workshop was the perfect opportunity to see how students can learn complex concepts through simple experiments.
“Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just “virtual reality”” Martin Rees, cosmologist and astrophysicist.
Mesure de la salinité avec un réfractomètre 
Identifications des organismes présents dans les habitats rocheux 
Mesure de la salinité avec un réfractomètre 
Identifications des organismes présents dans les habitats rocheux 
Observation des communautés algales au microscope 
Observation du prélèvement de plancton au microscope 
Observation au microscope des communautés planctoniques 