5 May 2012 A Week of Polar Goodness in Montreal

Bonjour everyone! I've made it back from Montreal, Canada, and the International Polar YearThe International Polar Year (IPY) is a two year (2007-2009) program of international research and education focused on the Arctic and Antarctic. Click here for more information about IPY. Conference

Montreal was covered in thick clouds when I arrived and headed to my hotel at the Delta Centre-ville. It was fun to be able to use a teensy bit of French, and to see fellow PolarTRECers Gary, Lindsey, Nick, Lindsey, Deanna, and my Conference Buddy Betsy! I loved also seeing our fearless leaders Janet and Sarah as well, and to be surrounded by the perfect blend of education of pure science made for an excellent week-- just what the doctor ordered to get ready for my expedition in July!

The Polar Educator’s Conference in Montreal was an amazing two days of non-stop polar action and polar connection! Housed in the beautiful Botanical Gardens, it was a great mix of keynote speakers, including Arctic Researchers, and breakout sessions that were hands-on! My favorite sessions I attended (and that I’ll be using tomorrow!) are the data-related ones. I’m passionate about giving my students authentic opportunities in science and math, so to go to NASA’s session on using real-world GIS data and mapping gave me great ideas to work with Dr. Rasic and our maps we’ll be making at Raven’s Bluff. I also loved a Google Earth session with David Carlson where we downloaded layers that let us get real-time cloud and weather data that I look forward to using with our virtual field trip we’ll be creating, and Paul Hamilton gave us rich data on climate change so our kids can play and analyze real numbers!

The rest of the conference was an insight into the world of science! Most conferences I attend are educator-focused, so to be surrounded by scientists in their element was a way for me to absorb more knowledge! I loved being able to dip in and out of plenary sessions, outreach-based sessions, and pure science sessions! I, of course, went to tech-heavy sessions being a techie gal, so I loved learning about glacial robots and rovers. I loved meandering about the Poster Sessions, particularly the outreach sessions and seeing fellow PolarTREC teachers still involved after their expeditions, like John Wood and Betsy Wilkening. The evening receptions were absolutely wonderful and I’ve made some strong connections with researchers, such as the Toolik researchers, that I look forward to continuing to work with in classroom collaborations. We had a Researcher/Educator mixer that was great-- we wandered about hearing about everyone’s research and I was amazed to hear how big outreach was in everyone’s minds! I’m also excited to see progress on a polar educator’s network to keep the excitement going. I’m so appreciative of PolarTREC sponsoring this professional development experience, and can’t wait to spread the benefits to my students.

My favorite takeway is definitely the Polar Resource Book is an absolute treasure trove, and I’m so excited to take the ones of most use to my expedition and share them out here! So cool-- sitting on top of Montreal used to be an ice sheet that came and went! 15,000 years ago the Southern Ocean trapped a bunch of CO2 for some reason and kept it out of the atmosphere and it cooled the world! Then later it released it and it all melted. Crazy!