BlueMinds4Teachers is an educational toolkit on the ocean literacy principles for teachers, 

The project aimed to strengthen the competence of teachers and other marine educators of all levels in Ocean Literacy (OL) by providing an online training course with 3 sessions of approximately 2 hours each. The sessions have been dedicated to exploring principles, concepts, scope & sequence of OL, but also pedagogical strategies and aspects of social sciences (e.g., blue economy, blue careers), focusing on topics related to our daily lives and EU priorities, the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN Ocean Decade, the EU Mission: Restore our Ocean and Waters, the Network of Blue Schools.

To this end, the online training course was designed during a workshop held in Croatia in 2024 with the collaboration of marine and freshwater scientists, educational and social scientists, teachers experienced in implementing blue projects and young ocean ambassadors across Europe.

This is the digital toolkit that collects all the project material in a reproducible, exportable and adaptable form, under a CC-BY licence, to the different needs of teachers and educators:

• the webinars on the 7 Ocean Literacy Principles
• the booklet with the Lesson Plans on the 7 Ocean Literacy Principles
• the presentations of the training course including useful links/references

The toolkit can be downloaded here:

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WHO WE ARE

Course Staff

Yolanda Koulouri 

She is a marine biologist currently working as a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology & Aquaculture (IMBBC) of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) in Crete Island (Greece). She has adequate experience working on research projects and writing scientific articles concerning marine biodiversity and benthic ecology, environmental assessment and monitoring, coastal zone management, artificial reefs technology for marine protected zones and recreational diving parks, ocean literacy, and citizen science. She is a founding member of the regional Mediterranean group of the European Marine Science Educators Association (EMSEA) and co-chair (2021-to date) of the Expert Working Group on Ocean Literacy of European Global Ocean Observing System (EuroGOOS). She is currently CEO of the HCMR spin-off company “Artificial Reef Innovative Applications” (ARIA). She is the representative of HCMR for EU4Ocean Coalition and Platform and member of the Scientific Council of the IMBBC-HCMR (2021-to date). Finally, she is the author of popular books for kids of all ages talking about the sea and its creatures, while she has Master of Arts in Creative Writing.

Francesca Alvisi

She is a land and marine geologist, PhD, currently working as research scientist at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-ISMAR) in Bologna. For about ten years she worked on sedimentology, stratigraphy, geochemistry and palynology of alluvial and lake sedimentary records to reconstruct the environment and climate of the past and recent times. In 1996, she began collaborating with the CNR studying marine coastal/shelf environments. She studies marine sedimentary processes, biogeochemical fluxes, and land-sea interactions. She also works on natural resources vs. human migration interaction in historical and current times. As an expert in Ocean Literacy, she is a mentor in schools, masters and training courses for teachers and educators, as well as a moderator of scientific and educational meetings, workshops, and round tables. Actually, she coordinates the project BlueNIGHTs (https://bluenights.eu/) to bring a touch of blue in the EU Researchers’ Night. She speaks English and French.   

Melita Mokos

She is a marine biologist, PhD, an Assistant professor working at the Department of Ecology, Agronomy and Aquaculture at the University of Zadar, Croatia where she teaches at the Underwater Science and Technology undergraduate programme and Sustainable Management of Aquatic Ecosystems post-graduate programme. She was a vice president of the European Marine Science Educators Association (EMSEA) (2018-2022) and a coordinator of the regional EMSEA Mediterranean group (2015-2022). She is an ocean literacy (OL) expert, working in this field since 2015 and her OL work focuses on advancing OL in the Mediterranean basin, development of the Mediterranean Sea Literacy, the role of Ocean Literacy in sustainable management of the Mediterranean Sea ecosystems and resources, as well as importance of OL in education at different educational levels. Her research interests are ocean literacy, marine litter and blue carbon. She is engaged in science outreach working mainly with pre-school and school children.     

Maria Cheimonopoulou 

She is a biologist working at the Hydrobiological Station of Pella, a decentralized agency of the Greek Ministry of Rural Development and Agriculture. Her field of expertise is monitoring fish populations in mountainous streams and rivers and promoting management measures in collaboration with rural authorities and communities. She has been working for 12 years as a biology teacher in Greek Secondary Education and, inter alia, as a teacher trainer/lecturer in seminars on environmental issues and hands-on biology labs. She is an Ocean Literacy (OL) expert, a founding member of the regional EMSEA Mediterranean group (2015) and a non-formal educator focusing on promoting Environmental Literacy and especially OL in inland areas. She is committed to science outreach working with rural administrative authorities, public and school children.   

Athanasios Mogias

He is an Associate Professor in Environmental Education/Education for Sustainability at the Department of Primary Education, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece. His research interests and corresponding research work lie primarily in the fields of Environmental Education, Education for Sustainability, Ocean, and Climate Literacy. His targets are mainly pre-service and in-service primary and secondary education teachers’ training as well as curricula and school textbook development. He is a founding member of the regional Mediterranean group of the European Marine Science Educators Association (EMSEA-Med). He has been publishing his work in international and national peer-reviewed scientific journals and conference proceedings, constantly reviewing in several national and international scientific journals, while at the same time being involved in research projects and collaborations regarding Environmental Education, Ocean Literacy, and marine ecology projects. 

Evelyn Paredes Coral (Invited speaker) 

She is a marine scientist committed to advancing the blue economy through ocean literacy initiatives. With a transdisciplinary background on marine, social, educational and behavioural sciences, she has a keen interest in understanding the connections between people and the ocean, with particular interest in people working in the blue economy. Evelyn obtained her marine science degree from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru with specialization in hydrobiology and fisheries (2011). She has, in addition, a master in Marine and Lacustrine Science and Management with specialization on conservation biology and ecosystem management from the Free University of Brussels, Ghent University and University of Antwerp in Belgium (2017). She recently earned her PhD in Marine Sciences at Ghent University studying the connections between maritime workers and the ocean to better understand how these connections translate into sustainable practices. Besides her solid scientific background, she gained expertise in projects oriented to training and skills development for maritime professionals while she worked as Scientific Project Officer at the Marine Training Unit (Ghent University).

Silja Teege (Invited speaker)

She is the Managing Director of Sea Teach and a member of the legal board of EMSEA (European Marine Science Educators). She holds a bachelor’s degree in Financial Administration and a master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Hamburg. She has always been active in many projects and actions related to maritime and youth subjects and has run with her international team several highly successful EU projects which set out to find solutions around recognition problems of professional skipper qualifications and around training of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. She is the initiator and writer of the prestigious BlueGeneration and Next BlueGeneration projects, which aim to bring unemployed and undecided youth into the Blue Economy by directly visiting hundreds of school classes, developing inspiring games and working closely with employers. She is also a founding member of Clean Boating, an NGO based in Mallorca that aims to raise awareness of plastic pollution in the oceans and the maritime sector to schools and the boating community.      

Digital toolkit  Staff

Gabriela Carrara

She graduated in Geological Sciences (1992, Univ. Pisa) and hold a PhD in Earth Sciences (2002, Univ. Parma). She is a marine geologist with over 25 years of experience as a researcher/technologist at scientific institutions in Italy (CNR, Uni-BO, Proambiente srl) and abroad (Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera, LNEG), and as a consultant at public (Servizio Geologico Sismico e del Suolo - Regione EmiliaRomagna) and private companies. From 1990 to the present, she has participated in several national and EU projects dedicated to the study of the main ocean basins and the Mediterranean Sea. Over the years she has specialised in the collection, organisation, management and sharing of scientific datasets and related metadata according to the dictates of OpenScience. She is co-author of numerous scientific articles published in ISI journals and since 2019 she has been collaborating with the CNR Library in Bologna as ‘Data Steward’ dealing with the organisation and management of multidisciplinary scientific databases and metadata, with the dual purpose of long-term preservation and easy consultation by the public. She is also responsible for organising communication and scientific dissemination events for the CNR Research Area in Bologna. She speaks Italian, English and Portuguese.

Debora Mazza

She graduated in historical sciences. She is a research fellow at the Dario Nobili CNR Library in Bologna, with which she has been collaborating since 2019. She deals with in-presence services for users, communication activities and collaborates on the development of the new NILDE 6/Talaria software version.