At the end of 2007, teacher Turtle Haste's eighth-grade class at James Monroe Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico reported on a project to measure sun shadows all over the world, including at several Antarctic stations. to better understand how the Earth and the Sun interact, and how the seasons progress. The project is going strong, and there is now a call for everyone to join in. There is a new project page up, and also a Google Map that shows recent measurements: ...

An Italian Teacher's experience in Antarctica, by Graziano Scotto di Clemente. Italian Translation I am an Italian Science teacher. I am working in a lower secondary school (11-14 year old pupils), for the past 30 years, in Treviso, a town near Venice (North Italy). I am interested in science education, science history, and environmental activities.

 

 

An Italian Teacher's experience in Antarctica, by Graziano Scotto di Clemente.



Italian Translation

I am an Italian Science teacher. I am working in a lower secondary school (11-14 year old pupils), for the past 30 years, in Treviso, a town near Venice (North Italy). I am interested in science education, science history, and environmental activities. I participated in the ARISE – Andrill project during the 2007 October/December expedition in Antarctica (McMurdo Station).

ANDRILL (ANtarctic geological DRILLing) is a multinational collaboration comprised of more than 200 scientists, students, and educators from four nations (Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and the United States) to recover stratigraphic records from the Antarctic margin.

The chief objective is to drill back in time to recover a history of paleoenvironmental changes that will guide our understanding of how fast, how large, and how frequent glacial and interglacial changes were in the Antarctic region. Future scenarios of global warming require guidance and constraint from past history that will reveal potential timing frequency and site of future changes.

ANDRILL has established an immersion experience for science educators (ARISE) to facilitate development of mechanisms and materials to effectively connect ANDRILL with the public.

During the 2007-2008 I planned on conducting a geology field trip and museum visits with his classes to observe and understand the geological evolution after the last Ice Period. I planed to use observations of everyday objects like refrigerators, air conditioners, petrol engines... to build intuitive links among entropy and energy, using software models to study the most important connections among the living beings in a habitat. I planed on doing creative science fiction writing with my class, as well as comic strips and drawings set in critical moments of prehistory or in the future, and presenting collected information and findings of the polar research through simple performances.

From Antarctica I worked with some Italian schools on the Polar topics, expecially geology to explain what the Andrill core told to the researchers.

For my pupils I prepared some materials on Antarctica, especially to suggest to them some reflections on the hypothetical influences of the climate changes.

An interesting didactic experience was organized by the Arise team in the McMurdo Station for the workers of the base.

This exibition was created by the group of teachers and scientists who are working in Mc Murdo Station to show and to explain to the other workers and people of the Antarctic base what the significance, the tecnology and the scientific topics of the Andrill project are. For the Arise group it could be a good test of our didactic ideas on a simple itinerary on polar science for pupils. The main challenge: to be able to explain and to show the net of knowledges, the collaborations between different disciplines to understand what happened in the past and what can happen in the future (other informations and photos in http://www.exhibitfiles.org/andrill ).

Some materials (in Italian) are on our school website: http://www.scuolastefanini.it (click on “Antartide” in the upper menu).

During this year in my school we are working on the CO₂ emissions and our carbon footprinters, comparing the “Human habitats” of the pupils of different schools: North Italy, Greece, Poland, Estonia, inside an European project that we have called “SMILe, Science and Mathematics Interactive Learning” (http://smile.kornelowka.com – in progress…).

An article written by Graziano on his experience can be downloaded in both English and Italian.

The aims of AntonyJinman.com are three-fold: To promote Education through Expedition To report credible eye witness accounts of climate change To promote sustainable technology for the future. "Through exploring remote locations around the world I aim to highlight environmental issues within the classroom. Expedition takes us to places that few people have been to. To travel to a place and experience such environments first hand is so much more powerful than reading a textbook in a classroom. Through use of film and photography I aim to share these experiences, to educate and inspire. " ...

Nancy Etchemendy writes: Hi, everyone -- Our fascinating Antarctic iceberg research voyage aboard the NSF icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer is over now and we are safely home again enjoying the warmth and light of summer. But my two blogs about the trip will remain online as a polar teaching resource for kids of all ages. Over the next few months, I will continue to enrich both blogs with high-quality links to sites of related interest and with additional facts about the subject material -- icebergs, the Antarctic oceans, global warming, Antarctic sea life, scientific method, and much more. Both blogs can be accessed via icebreakerblog.org ...

Dear Rhian and IPY, I am writing in order to let you know about the most recent IPY Day in Brazil (18/06). I work at two different schools in Brazil: Colégio Neruda, in Araraquara, SP, and Colégio Puríssimo Coração de Maria, in Rio Claro, SP. At Colégio Neruda, after we discussed the importance of the Poles and climate change, the students made posters to express their impressions and concerns about those matters. We will send some of the posters to students in other countries, with whom they will exchange opi...

Hi, everybody. The Iceberg Expedition is underway! We are currently enroute to the Weddell Sea in search of our chosen icebergs. For details about which scientists are doing what, and daily life aboard the ship, surf to www.icebreaker.org. Hope to see you there. ____ Thanks to Nancy Etchemendy for this post: In the darkness of Antarctic winter, a team of scientists on a lonely icebreaker will soon explore the mysterious icebergs of the Weddell Sea, with a twist. Children are invited. Global warming in the Antarctic has recently caused ancient ice shelves to shatter into thousands of free-drifting icebergs that affect the air, the water, and possibly Earth's climate in complex, unknown...

Hello, everyone-- The departure date for my Antarctic voyage is rapidly approaching (May 26). Preparations are well underway, with many last-minute items to attend to. I'm posting to my two blogs as often as I can ("Rime of the Modern Mariner" for teens and up, and "Unarctica" for middle-graders). Some of what I'm writing about now is personal preparations, and some is about preparations the researchers are making. My most recent "Unarctica" post is about Chaiten volcano, which we may be seeing from the airplane on our flight southward from Santiago to Punta Arenas to catch the NSF icebreaker that will be our home for a month. Most recent "Rime" post concerns the radio-controlled airplane the researchers will use for reconaissance and planting GPS beacons on i...

Just a quick note to let you know there are two new entries on my "Unarctica" blog for middle-graders. Written from the viewpoints of two middle-schoolers, these posts are about Mom's angst concerning letting her child go off on an icebreaker voyage for a month, and about the awesome radio-controlled airplane the engineering team will use for aerial photography and GPS tracking of icebergs. Join the fun! ____ Thanks to Nancy Etchemendy for this post: In the darkness of Antarctic winter, a team of scientists on a lonely icebreaker will soon explore the mysterious icebergs of the Weddell Sea, with a twist. Children are invited. Global warming in the Antarctic h...

By Turtle Haste, M.S. Ed. It may be long after the initial project has completed, but the continuation of the measurement of a shadow cast by a 1-meter stick at different latitudes has become an international effort. With assistance from a member of the US Geological Survey who placed a message on a bulletin board, the spring equinox measurement gathered recordings from a variety of locations across the northern hemisphere. Collaborators in Norway, China, Russia, Egypt, the South Pole, and ...

Hi, everyone. My name is Nancy Etchemendy, and I am a professional writer. Most of my work is for children and teens. On May 26, 2008, I will step out of the cozy room where I usually spin my tales, and will head south for the first of two month-long Antarctic voyages aboard the National Science Foundation's icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer. We will be researching the complex ways in which the icebergs that have recently broken off of the ice shelves are affecting the environment around them. Eventually, I will write at least one K-12 book about the project. But before, during, and immediately after the voyages, I will be posting to two blogs, intended to provide engaging, informative, interactive reading for different age groups, and classroom opportunities and science fact...