The Marine Education Center was established in Taipei Municipal Guandu Elementary School in 2008. It started with only one classroom. In October 2014, it took about six million dollars to transform the normal classrooms into the Marine Education Center which is located on the fourth floor of the students’ activity center (Gan-dou Building). There are eleven learning corners for students at school, including the marine reading corner in Gan-dou Ark Library on the third floor and the kayaking experience corner at the swimming pool on the first floor. Teachers keep putting a lot of effort into the courses to make them better and better and create a good learning environment for marine education.

Looking back at the long path we tread, we’ve been building up everything about marine education step by step. In 2016, we combined marine education and STEAM (science, technology, engineering arts, and mathematics) together and started with a new plan. To put interdisciplinary learning into practice, 170 graduates who were led by Principal Wen-te Wu and Mr. Chih-jung Wen built up 14 kayaks and had the maiden voyage on their graduation ceremony at Zhonggang River Pier. Mayer Wen-che Ko was invited to deliver a speech to encourage the graduates at the ceremony and declared that he was very impressed by the featured graduation ceremony of Guandu Elementary School. In 2017, we contributed our marine education plans to Global Views Educational Foundation and were honored to be chosen as ‘Taiwan 100’.

best to help a Striped dolphin. The Dwarf sperm whale was recovered and went back to the ocean, but the Steno bredanensis and the Striped dolphin were not so lucky. They were injured too badly and we couldn’t save them eventually. All of the teachers and the students of our school had learnt a lesson from these touching and unforgettable experiences. Miss Ming-shan Li, one of the teachers, even wrote a book about this Dwarf sperm whale saving story which includes literary and natural environment protection. This young adult book is called ‘Sailing to the Whale Island’ and is now the shared book for grade 5 and 6.

There are two different kinds of courses, Marine Intellectual and Marine Pioneer, for students to explore when they visit Taipei City Ocean Education Resources Center. More than ten experiential lessons were planned. Marine Intellectual or Wetland Expeditions are on Tuesdays. because of the breakouts of Covid-19, the marine teachers also walk out of Guandu Elementary School and go to other schools to teach these two courses. As for Marine Pioneer, it’s on Thursdays and Fridays. In the morning, students learn how to kayak at the swimming pool. In the afternoon, they can gain the knowledge of marine from Marine Intellectual. Recently, we inventory the resources we have. With VR equipment, we show students the beauty of the ocean. Moreover, we have some new lessons. Seafood Index is a lesson to let students know more about how to make balance between resources consumption and sustainable development. Through Horrible Fishnet, students have to try to get rid of the swimming ring without using their hands and understand the difficulties for the sea creatures to get rid of the fishnet.

From the year of 2021, Ministry of Education tries to put marine education and outdoor education together and hopes that the new courses will bring students the new ground of marine education and provide them more opportunities to learn from the ocean.