PolarTREC informal educator Jocelyn Argueta traveled to the South Pole in 2019 with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and Askaryan Radio Array Expedition. She created a YouTube series Tiny Ice: Bits from Antarctica to highlight the travel, science, and life at the South Pole, both in English and Spanish. In this 10-part
La educadora informal de PolarTREC, Jocelyn Argueta, viajó al Polo Sur en 2019 con el Observatorio IceCube Neutrino y la Expedición Askaryan Radio Array. Creó una serie de YouTube Hielo Pequeño: Pedazos de la Antártida para explicar el viaje, la ciencia y la vida en el Polo Sur, tanto en inglés como en español. En esta serie
The PolarTREC Field Experience is amazing! PolarTREC (Polar Teachers Researchers and Educators Exploring and Collaborating) matches polar researchers with educators to highlight, and increase accessibility to, the science happening in some of the most fascinating places on our planet—the Arctic and Antarctic regions. It is an opportunity for educators to be completely immersed in the culture
Students will collect soil samples and analyze them with some of the same procedures used by researchers in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. Soil microfauna (e.g. nematodes) will be extracted from the samples using a Baermann funnel. Students will compare their own data to published data from researchers working in Antarctica.
NASA’s Operation IceBridge uses remote sensing techniques to build a picture of parts of our world not accessible or easily observed by humans. Flying 1500 feet above sea and land ice, the science team uses LiDAR, Radar, Infrared imaging, and high resolution digital imagery to collect information about our polar regions year after year. In this classroom project, inspired and
PolarTREC has been an amazing experience, wow! The heart of the PolarTREC program is the field expedition, which allows the teacher to be embedded in a field research team. STEM educators are passionate about what they teach but often lack access to meaningful opportunities to participate in basic research. Programs like PolarTREC provide that missing
NASA’s Operation IceBridge, the largest airborne survey of Earth’s polar ice, uses remote sensing techniques like LiDAR (light detection and ranging), snow- and ice-penetrating radar, high resolution digital imaging, and infrared cameras to collect information on our changing ice sheets and sea ice. Several times each year a science team and flight crew head out on month-long campaigns in
The PolarTREC program and my experience with NASA’s Operation IceBridge during the 2016 Spring Arctic Campaign in Greenland has reinforced my belief in teacher-researcher collaborations as a powerful tool for engaging students in STEM and giving them the chance to think and explore career possibilities outside of the four walls of their classrooms. One of the most effective