To the Beaufort Sea without Leaving the Lab

On Wednesday August 20, I and about 30 students and faculty had the opportunity to participate in a live International Polar Year event with Dr. Gerty Ward. She is the Durham Academy Science teacher that has been participating in the PolarTREC Expedition We spent the first 30 minutes or so listening and watching pre-recorded audio and slides prepared in advance by the team since the ship is out to sea and communication is done by satellite telephone. The presentations provided a deep understanding to what the crew has been working on and how it impacts our knowledge of the changes going on with climate change.

The technology we used to interact is Wimba which is used by a growing number of schools to conduct online teaching and training. I had looked into it for our school but found the cost too high. I was very impressed with how well it worked from setup to how efficiently we were able to communicate and learn while 3000+/- miles apart. The only glitch came when the crew called into the wrong land line and the operator either could not or would not transfer the call.

A personal highlight for me was when Alice as able to say hello to her mom. The whole experience reminded me of the time at Grey Culbreth Middle School when I brought my telescope to school so students could observe the solar eclipse (with filter). The line stretched around the school as teaching stopped and observing took place. Tools like Wimba and Moodle allow the world to be smaller and classrooms to be global.

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This is the view of the students and teachers participating. I used a Snowball Microphone for audio. Worked well on the microphone stand.

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