This PolarConnect event on Antarctica Day (December 1) 2022 was broadcast live from the Dry Valleys of Antarctica with teacher Lucy Coleman and researcher Rachel Morgan-Kiss.
PolarTREC teacher Deanna Wheeler from JC Parks Elementary School is interviewed (:30-:43) as a leader who is educating today's youth and future leaders about the Arctic. She discusses a few of the many activities her classes, school and community are doing to teach people about the importance of the Arctic and what they can do on a daily basis to
In a “March Madness” game of survival of the fittest, will your microbe and its genes survive the test of changing conditions on Planet Earth and beyond? Students choose genes from a “toolbox” and pit their microbe against their classmates’, using critical thinking and argument writing to determine the microbe with the best chance of success. Based on PolarTREC
Analogs are used in science investigations to better understand systems we can’t access ourselves. In this lesson, students explore the Dry Valleys of Antarctica to better understand microbial communities on early Earth and what might have been possible on ancient Mars. Students will examine photographs, written descriptions, and artistic renderings of early Earth, the Dry Valley lakes, and
What happens to the salinity in the Bering Sea during ice and no ice conditions? Does it change throughout the year and at different depths during different seasons? Create a model of the Bering Sea in ice conditions. Change the conditions based on seasonal changes to explore the effects of runoff on salinity.
Polar researchers Jackie Grebmeier and Lee Cooper, joined PolarTREC teacher Deanna Wheeler in a presentation about their work in the Bering Sea. The presentation was at the Old Durham Church in Maryland.
This data plotting lesson compares different stratospheric ozone data collected at the South Pole in September 1969, September 1998, September 2008, January 1999, and January 2008. This ozone comparison activity allows students to make conclusions about the annual and seasonal ozone hole as well as overall ozone concentration changes over Antarctica. Students use authentic data collected at the
This data plotting lesson is about temperature changes throughout the atmosphere. The data was collected together with the ozone data in January 2008.
The temperature vs. altitude profile allows students to make conclusions about annual and seasonal temperature changes in the atmosphere up to about 35 kilometers in the stratosphere. The best part of this lesson is using
This article highlights climate change research on board the USCGC Healy in the spring of 2009 with interest in the role of Deanna Wheeler, PolarTREC teacher on board the ship. There are also short videos embedded within the article.
This Live from IPY event was a private event held with J.C. Parks Elementary School, and other regional Maryland Schools. PolarTREC teacher, Deanna Wheeler presented along with researchers studying various components of the Bering Sea ecosystem. The audience was primarily elementary school students.