The Arctic Ocean Curriculum Unit was created by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States with funding from the North Pacific Research Board. This project aimed to update and revise existing Arctic Ocean-related lesson plans originally created by PolarTREC program teacher alumni. The format used lends itself to the changes in education - providing student-facing slide decks that allow
TEK TALKS is a series of webinars that was developed to foster understanding among scientists in regard to working with Indigenous People. View archived lectures and/or sign up for future lectures through the website.
This lesson will provide students with an opportunity to design and carry out an experiment that mimics the conditions causing accelerated ice melt along the face of the Thwaites Glacier off the southwest coast of Antarctica. Created by Sarah Slack during her expedition to Thwaites aboard the icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer, this activity aligns with the Science and Engineering
This lesson about the factors affecting water density in the Amundsen Sea was developed by educator Sarah Slack during her PolarTREC expedition aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer icebreaker. Part of the science mission was to create a detailed map of the seafloor at the face of the Thwaites Glacier, which revealed a series of channels that were conducting a
This lesson plan is designed to teach students about the importance of the benthic community in the shallow portions of the Arctic and how climate change may affect their respiration. One of the dominant benthic animals in the Arctic, the bivalve Macoma sp., is an important food source for higher trophic level organisms such as walrus and Spectacled Eiders
PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is a program funded by the National Science Foundation that partners K-12 teachers in the United States with scientists doing research in polar regions. The goal of the program is for teachers to be authentically integrated into scientific expeditions in order to gain new skills and experiences that they
This lesson plan is designed to teach students about benthic biodiversity in the Arctic by analyzing data from the Distributed Biological Observatory (DBO). Although you can’t see them from the surface, the organisms found on the ocean floor are important indicators of ecosystem health and provide information about productivity. Students will explore sites throughout the Bering and Chukchi Seas
We are really looking forward to the 2020-2021 field season for the PolarTREC teams!
This space is dedicated to information about the upcoming PolarTREC Orientation that is required for the educators that were selected for 2020. It's also a space for those that are interested and/or joining the Orientation to learn more about the logistics related to the training.
If
A working group was convened in late May, 2019, for the purpose of developing guidance to North Pacific Research Board (NPRB) and Alaska Sea Grant (ASG) to encourage and support outreach by researchers to Alaska’s K-12 Indigenous students in culturally responsive ways. The impetus for the working group was a disconnect we perceived between an increasing emphasis on inclusion of