IODP

doi:10.14379/iodp.pr.352.2015

Outreach

Education and outreach activities reached the public through social media sites using high-quality imagery, video, and sounds and through interactions that were designed to explain the science, drilling mechanics, and all aspects of shipboard life. Our three social media outlets saw a noticeable increase in followers, reaching 5000 “likes” on Facebook. Scientists contributed expedition updates via their own blogs and the joidesresolution.org site. News coverage was provided through two Michigan print-media outlets (MEA Today and Midland Daily News), and through articles hosted on National Geographic’s blog site as well as AGU’s Geoscience Blogosphere. Audio interviews helped produce a podcast for a radio outlet, audio for a former outreach officer, and audio for a future magazine piece about the expedition’s findings. Video footage was developed for conference use, Japanese television station NHK, and a video focused on IODP technicians. We conducted 43 live broadcast events (5 of which were broadcast to multiple locations) that reached 45 geographic locations, including Egypt, Israel, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. (Table T3). Ten broadcast sites were colleges or universities, 4 were public venues, 1 was a School of Rock event, and the rest were kindergarten through twelfth grade schools. Over 50% of the live broadcasts were recorded by the host sites to be used for future educational purposes by the host institutions. Curriculum-related activities were developed in conjunction with shore-based educators to cover topics for math, cultural studies, engineering, and geoscience classes. These will be further developed postexpedition. Expedition materials were collected to share with some of the broadcast sites during postexpedition outreach events. Finally, an expedition crossover document was created to streamline the educational activities for future outreach teams.