PolarTREC teacher Jacquelyn Hams' expedition is featured in Foundations: the Newsletter of the Geo2YC division of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers.
This Live from IPY! event was part of the International Polar Week in October 2009. The theme of the week was was 'What happens at the poles affects us all'. This live event was held with PolarTREC teacher Cristina Galvan and the University of Wyoming polar bear research team on 8 October 2009. They were working on the USCGC Polar
This activity was adapted from a TEA activity authored by:
* Sandra Kolb, Education Consultant, Poulsbo, Washington
* Kolene Krysl, Westside Community Schools, Omaha, Nebraska
* Larry Rose, Pleasanton Middle School, Pleasanton, California
* Wendy Slijk, La Costa Canyon High School, San Diego County, California
The original activity can be found at: http://tea.armadaproject.org/activity/kolb/tobesaltyseaiceornottobesaltyseaice_main.html
Field Notes, the newsletter of Polar Field Services highlights a number of PolarTREC expeditions and 2010/2011 application period. Visit the article online.
This short article is an U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fact sheet about Ursus maritimus, the Polar Bear. It covers basic information, including: appearance, feeding habits, reproduction, adaptations, and protection.
The journal assignment involves students in current science research. Through the teacher’s journals, they will learn about how the research teams work together, design their research, tools that are needed and how they live and work in an extreme environment.
Objective
Students will be able to:
1. Understand how scientific research is conducted in an extreme environment
Working in groups, students will use common materials to create layers of snow and ice representing thousands of years of stratification. Groups will exchange their ice layers and extract core samples to analyze them.
Objective
Notice the phenomenon of stratification.
Notice that layers can tell a story of change over time.
Students will independently explore the PolarTREC expeditions, and reflect on the scientific questions, discoveries, and outcomes of the work that is or has been done.
Description
Students will visit the PolarTREC website at www.polartrec.com, where they will find a teacher who is in the field presently, or was already in the field. You may select one expedition
Students are presented with an actual series of tundra photos, which they use to develop a hypothesis for which sort of ground cover will have the most/least permafrost depth. Then they are given a set of actual data and use this to test their hypothesis
Objective
Students will:
* understand what permafrost is and how it develops
This lesson was modeled after some of the routine activities undertaken by the geologists on the Kuril Island Expedition.
Complete the following activities:
* Day 1 To measure a simple topographic profile with a level instrument or hand level and stadium rod.
* Day 2 To use the measurements from Day 1 (and/or actual measurements from the Kuril