EDUCATION | Driving tomorrow’s achievements
06 October 2008
GoNorth Series Brings Students on a Virtual Arctic Adventure
Polar huskies lead the way to lessons in social, natural sciences
Washington — In 2009, a band of fearless scientists, explorers and educators will set out for Greenland’s Arctic north with a team of polar huskies pulling their dogsled, taking with them kids in thousands of classrooms from all 50 U.S. states and 29 countries. The average temperature will be far below what most people have ever experienced as the team huddles in a tent and tries to send messages, photographs and video to students in classrooms around the world.
The award-winning GoNorth! Adventure Learning Series — which recently was named a laureate of the 2008 Microsoft Education Award — uses satellite communication and interactive Web connections to take students on real-time, virtual trips where they learn about climate change and Arctic cultures from scientists and indigenous people. Unlike most virtual learning programs, in GoNorth, the students are involved in a real-world experience and are seeing firsthand the effects of global climate change.
GoNorth is the creation of Aaron Doering, an assistant professor of education at the University of Minnesota, and Paul Pregont and Mille Porsild of Nomads Adventure and Education who had traveled the Arctic with their polar huskies, computers and cameras since the mid-1990s. Together they defined the idea of “adventure learning."
“I was out for a run one morning and I thought to myself, ‘The way that we’re teaching students is wrong. We’re using text books that are 10 years old; we’re asking students to regurgitate facts,’” said Doering, who was then a teacher of middle school and high school social studies. “‘Why don’t we use the affordances of the technology that have become increasingly available to us and tie it to real-world experiences?’”
Excited by the potential of adventure learning, Doering contacted Pregont and Porsild and started calling people and writing grant proposals.
Their goal was clear from the outset: to motivate students in the classroom by using authentic real-world adventures tied to a curriculum. They also wanted the program to be free so that it would reach “the students that need to be reached — from the inner city, to rural America, to the Arctic.”
More than 3 million students in 3,400 classrooms on six continents have participated thus far in the GoNorth adventures.
“At that time, people knew less about the Arctic than they knew about the moon; it was the perfect blackboard for education,” he said.
EXPLORING THE ARCTIC
The GoNorth team decided on a circumpolar look at the Arctic that focuses on these questions: What is the Arctic? Who are the Arctic’s people? How do we affect the Arctic and how does the Arctic ecosystem affect the Earth? What part can we take in protecting the environment and the lives of traditional people? Will a commitment to sustainability make a difference in our lives?
Each year, GoNorth develops a new 500-page-plus curriculum and activity guide on a particular region of the Arctic and indigenous culture and then launches its expedition of educators — including a schoolteacher chosen specially for the trip — scientists and explorers, traveling through indigenous communities, talking to indigenous people about climate change, documenting their traditional knowledge and then using modern technology to share it with students around the world.
In addition to chatting with the team in the Arctic and following its progress through text and multimedia, students get to chat with experts on the cultures, the flora and fauna, and sustainable development. The students can also engage in online discussions with each other about what they have learned.
“We’re welcomed into these communities because we’re traveling in the traditional way, by dogsled,” Doering said. “Immediately as we travel into town, they get on their two-way radios and are talking about the big dogs coming into town.”
The students also find the dogs important.
“The dogs completely engage these learners,” Doering said. “I go into the classroom, and the kids will introduce themselves, and they’ll say, ‘Hi, my name’s Bobby and my dog is Buttra.’ They follow these dogs throughout the entire project, and it’s part of their learning experience.”
In 2004, when the expedition team members arrived back at the airport in Minnesota, there were about 300 students waiting to greet them, Doering said. “They felt like they were part of the project and they wanted to see us return.”
“It’s a narrative; it’s a story that’s unfolding, and they want to be part of it,” he said.
Indigenous communities are using the GoNorth curriculum “because it’s reinforcing their culture and their language that is being lost today,” he added.
FUTURE ADVENTURES
In 2006, GoNorth traveled through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, visiting with the Gwich’in and Inupiat Eskimo. In 2007, the adventurers went to Chukotka, Russia, and talked with the Chukchi and Yu’pik peoples. In 2008, GoNorth traveled through Fennoscandia in the arctic regions of Finland, Sweden and Norway, getting to know the Saami.
In 2009, the group will travel to Greenland, the land of the Greenlandic and Polar Inuit. In 2010, the Inuvialuit in Nunavut, Canada, will be the focal point.
Each year, the curriculum focuses on a particular environmental issue: in Alaska, oil exploration; in Chukotka, Russia, mineral exploration; in Fennoscandia, deforestation; in Greenland, maritime exploration; and in Nunavut, Canada, transboundary pollution.
Doering is excited about the potential of adventure learning to spark elementary and secondary education as well as collaboration among students around the world. He envisions students sharing the adventure of learning what’s in their backyards, whether they live in Minnesota, California, Australia or the Arctic.
“Students and teachers will collect the media artifacts, write a curriculum, have the collaboration opportunities, and so pretty soon you’ll have these different adventure-learning environments from around the world that teachers can then pick and choose from and integrate in their classroom.”
Visit the Go North! Adventure Learning Series Web site for more information.
GoNorth Series Brings Students on Virtual Arctic Adventure