Rick Holt, a 2008 Iditarod finisher, near Finger Lake. Photo courtesy of John Concilus.

It’s that time again – the 37th annual Iditarod Sled Dog Race across Alaska will begin at 10 am, March 7, 2009. This ceremonial start is in downtown Anchorage, with the competitive start (or “restart”) scheduled for Sunday, March 8, 2009 in Willow, Alaska.

The Iditarod is an exciting basis for an interdisciplinary unit blending geography, language arts, math, and even art. For more ideas on creating an Iditarod lesson or unit, see our blog post, The Last Great Race: Teaching the Iditarod.

In addition, the Bering Strait School District (located along the Iditarod trail) provides free mushing resources, lessons, and live race coverage from a Student Broadcast Team through their annual IditaProject.  They use a wiki to provide free resources and options for web-based participation.  Download a pdf document with an overview of the project.

A student from the Bering Strait School District provides live race coverage through the IditaProject. Photo courtesy of John Concilus.

Daily Live Race Updates will begin Monday, March 9. 9 am and 3 pm Alaska Time, except when this conflicts with the thematic broadcast schedule (below). All updates are available via Flash Stream.

Thematic Broadcasts are scheduled at 8 am and 1 pm Alaska Time on the following dates and topics:

March 9: Background and Race Start Coverage

March 12: History and Culture

March 16: Mushing Math

March 17: Veterinary Medicine and Sled Dog Racing

March 18: Race Statistics and Records

March 19: Race Finish and Wrap Up

Finally, the wiki also includes forums  on mushing, Iditarod history, and support for students and teachers participating in the IditaProject.

There are a variety of ways to participate in the project, depending on your interest, time, and technological capabilities. Classes around the country can:

Visit the site for updates and themed broadcasts. No registration required!

Register for IditaProject. Watch live streams of the Student Broadcast Team and Race Updates, ask questions of special questions via Skype, steer the checkpoint webcam in Unalkleet, contribute directly to the wiki pages, participate in the online course via Moodle, and use the “Students Only” forum (run by students in the Inupiaq and Yup’ik villages). Registration is free, and requires a good web connection,  a browser that displays Flash, and the ability to install Skype and VLC Player (free software).

Participate in video conferences. A limited number of schools and classrooms can participate by two-way video conference.  This requires some planning, and coordination with the school district’s technology staff to ensure the devices (Tandberg or Polycom are most common) can talk to one another.  Schools participating this way will be able to more openly interact with staff and students during the themed broadcasts, as well as with special guests. All other IditaProject resources are available to these schools and classrooms as well. To register for video conferences, use the same form as for IditaProject and select the “Participate Live” or “Participate Live and Online” options.

Of course, space is limited and the race begins soon – so register today!

Have a lesson, unit, or online Iditarod resource you’d like to share? Post a comment – we’d love to hear from you!

Aerial views of migrating land mammals are not that unusual today, but videos of migrating Arctic marine mammals were—until this past summer.  

A camera crew aboard a helicopter captured the summer migration of the narwhal, an elusive, medium-size whale, for a natural history unit of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). According to a news story from the BBC, the bird’s eye view of the narwhals’ journey along fissures in melting sea ice from Baffin Bay and other deep waters to the coastlines of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic was a risky venture.

First the crew had to locate pods, or groups, of the creatures in an area described as “the size of Scotland,” where spring melting made the ice cover dangerous for human travel. Once they found the narwhals, cameramen mounted their equipment to the helicopter and, hoping for “good weather,” began filming the migration from the air. The news story contains a video clip from the BBC television series.

Justin Anderson, program producer, said, “This is the first time the narwhal migration has been filmed this way” He described the sight as “something from mythology – and we were all just completely gobsmacked when we saw them.”

Narwhals have long been likened to the unicorn of mythology because of the long spiral tusk that grows through their upper lips. In the adult male, the tusk can grow up to 10 feet long. Found only in the Arctic, narwhals average 13 to 16 feet in length. No one knows yet why the narwhals migrate in the summer. They feed in the deep waters in the winter and hardly feed at all in their summer locations.

Researchers are interested in learning more about the ranges of the narwhals’ migration and their social behavior as well as the impact of changes in the Arctic ice cover.

On March 20, the Spring Equinox, NASA invites a worldwide audience to observe Sun-Earth Day. Among the events planned is a webcast at 1:00 p.m. EST, featuring a panel of scientists, students monitoring the sun, and images and visualizations.  

With the theme Our Sun, Yours to Discover, the NASA Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum hopes to engage K-12 schools and the general public in space science activities, demonstrations and interactions with space scientists.

Prior to the one-day event, Solar Week, March 9-13, will provide a series of web-based classroom activities and games geared for upper-elementary, middle and high school students. Initiated in 2000 as a means of encouraging girls in the sciences, one of Solar Week’s special strengths is a role-model approach, expressed through online interaction between all students and leading women solar scientists

 The Solar Week web site will have an interactive message board where classrooms can pose questions to solar scientists.  

March 18 will be the eighth quarterly Polar Day sponsored by the International Polar Year (IPY) organization to enable schools and other groups worldwide to join in celebration of polar research. The March theme is Polar Oceans.

Ocean-related activities will continue throughout the week of March 17-26. Resources provided by IPY include virtual balloon launches, activities for teachers, multilingual educational flyers, press releases, IPY science projects, contact to IPY scientists, and live web and video connections to the polar regions. Web links to these resources and updates on scheduled events will be available at http://www.ipy.org/index.php?/ipy/detail/polaroceans .

Resources from the seven previous Polar Days can be found at http://www.ipy.org/index.php?/ipy/detail/international_polar_days/. Each event focused on a specific aspect of polar science. Topics have included sea ice, ice sheets, biodiversity in the polar regions, climate, and more.  

The 106 passengers and crew stranded when the adventure cruise ship Ocean Nova ran aground have been safely transferred to another ship.  The Clipper Adventure rescued the passengers and crew and is returning to Ushuaia, Argentina’s southernmost city, where the 15-day polar exploration originally began.

 The Ocean Nova ran into trouble in high winds near an Argentinian research station west of Debenham Island, Antarctica. The captain issued a distress signal when he was unable to free the ship. No electricity or fuel was lost, and there was no risk to those aboard.

Several hours after passengers were rescued, the evening tide freed the ship from the rocky shore. An inspection by divers showed no damage or leaking. The tour company, Quark Expeditions, plans to use the Ocean Nova for a 20-day expedition of the Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia and the Falkland Islands beginning Feb. 22.

This is not the first time cruise ships have encountered trouble in the rough waters around Antarctica. A Canadian-owned cruise ship sank in 2007, and another ran aground in December 2008. The potential for accidents and the ecological impacts of cruises have made Antarctic tourism a subject of much debate.

You are invited to share your International Polar Year (IPY) activities and resources with other teachers at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) conference, March 19-22, in New Orleans.

The Arctic Research Consortium (ARCUS) is organizing Teacher Share! A Share-a-Thon for Teachers Involved in IPY on Saturday, March 21, from 9 to 11 a.m. at the New Orleans Marriott.

ARCUS will have the ability to host short presentations, demonstrations, posters, displays, or some combination of all these things. For planning purposes, ARCUS is asking you to indicate your interest by responding to the questions below and emailing them to Janet Warburton, PolarTREC education project manager, at warburton@arcus.org no later than February 20.

****************************

Name:

Organization/School:

___ I want to do a short 5-10 minute presentation or demonstration (LCD

___ I would like to share resources or a poster (table space provided)

___ I would like to do BOTH a presentation and share resources

___ No, I don’t want to any of the above at this session but instead

(fill in what you want to do here):

___ I am unable to attend NSTA but would still like to share (resources, etc.).  Here’s what I can send you:

**************************

Tonight at 7pm EST we’re having an online chat in the TappedIn online learning community - http://tappedin.org. We’ll be working our way through the February 2009 issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears online magazine. If you can’t join us, you can still take “our tour” below. We meet the first Thursday of each month - hope you can join us in March when we discuss the Polar Plants issue. 

Sure, you’ve heard of emperor penguins…but what about giant petrels, skuas, or sanderlings? This issue, co-produced with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, explores the amazing birds that live in or migrate to the polar regions.

Let’s go to the February issue (http://beyondpenguins.nsdl.org/issue/index.php?date=February2009). You’ll see that we have five departments and then columns within each department. By the way – all issues are laid out the same way.

Let’s go to the department Professional Learning and click on the Science Content Knowledge link – you’ll get to the article “How Do Birds Stay Warm?” (http://tinyurl.com/aauygy)

This article discusses the adaptations that help birds survive in cold weather. Take a minute to scan the article. Do you see anything interesting?

We’ll come back to the Professional Learning department in a bit. First, let’s learn about two researchers recording bird sounds in the high Arctic.

Go back to the issue page (http://beyondpenguins.nsdl.org/issue/index.php?date=February2009) and go to the In the Field: Scientists at Work department. Click on the Researcher Stories link – you’ll get to the article “Nunavut, Canada: The Sounds and the Silence.” (http://tinyurl.com/bxolsg) Take a minute to skim the article. What type of bird were Gerrit and Martha trying to record?

You can hear some of Gerrit and Martha’s recordings in this month’s podcast in the Professional Learning department. (http://tinyurl.com/dejo7n). We are now creating a new episode each month to accompany the current issue. You can see all three of our episodes on the new podcast index page in the header. (http://tinyurl.com/d3xtpu)

Which podcast episode most interests you? How might you use this new feature?

Now let’s click on the column “Misconceptions” in the Professional Learning department. (http://tinyurl.com/dbc4df)

Scroll down to the misconceptions about Bird Behavior. Have you heard any of these before?

Of course, we also have lessons to use with your students. Let’s take a look at the “Lessons and Activities” article in the Science and Literacy department (http://tinyurl.com/df5vr9). Spend a few minutes looking at the breadth of activities – then report back on one that you find interesting.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology also offers many citizen-science projects. We have an article about using these projects to promote inquiry-based learning in your classroom. Let’s take a look at “Kids Becoming Scientists through Schoolyard Inquiry” in the Professional Learning department. (http://tinyurl.com/blh4xf)

Take a minute to skim the article. Can you see using one of these projects in your classroom?

We also have a bookshelf in the Science and Literacy department (http://tinyurl.com/baefuk). Are you familiar with any of these titles?

We also write our own informational texts for K-1, 2-3, and 4-5 students that go along with the theme of each issue of the magazine. They come in text, illustrated, and electronic versions. When you click on the Feature Story link (http://tinyurl.com/asodyo) and scroll through the document, you’ll see the text of the feature story, illustrated and printable versions, and then electronic versions of the story.

Our Feature Story, “The Dance of Life,” introduces students to the sanderling, a bird that migrates to the Arctic to breed during the spring and summer. As associated template at the end of the article helps students practice questioning techniques. Learn more about questioning in the Literacy Content Knowledge article in the Professional Learning department (http://tinyurl.com/ahvau2).

All the informational texts can be found by clicking on the Stories for Students link in the header - http://beyondpenguins.nsdl.org/information.php?topic=stories. Click on the link and look a few of the stories. Which ones do you think your students would like?

Go back to the February issue page (http://beyondpenguins.nsdl.org/issue/index.php?date=February2009) and spend a few minutes looking at the other columns that we didn’t go to.

You can see that there is a lot of other content that we didn’t cover! Hope you enjoy exploring the rest of the issue.

Image by Wilson A. Bentley. 

Did you know that while no two snowflakes are exactly the same, they are all six-sided? Snowflakes’ hexagonal shapes are due to the molecular structure of ice. As you might know, each water molecule is made of two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom and looks something like this:

As water freezes, the molecules are forced to align themselves into a very particular structure – a hexagonal lattice that is the basis for the six-sided snowflakes.

This shape also helps explain why water expands as it freezes, while all other solids contract. Ice takes up more space as a solid and is therefore less dense, meaning that ice floats in liquid water. No other compound behaves this way!

Snowflakes in the Classroom

During the winter months, our thoughts turn to all things cold and we often incorporate snow, ice, and even polar bears into our lessons. Teaching about snowflakes can help you meet science and math standards and incorporate art and even children’s literature into your instruction.

Students can read about water and ice in the Beyond Penguins story “Growing Floaters and Shrinking Sinkers” as a part of a lesson or unit or solids and liquids. This story is available at three grade levels: K-1, 2-3, and 4-5 and as text, color books, and electronic books. The version for grades 4-5 includes a suggested activity: modeling water molecules using gumdrops and marshmallows. Students can create edible water molecules and see the resultant hexagonal structure as they align their models to simulate the formation of ice.

Next, students can compare this molecular model to the actual structure of snowflakes. A great place to start is a web site about Wilson “Snowflake Bentley”, the first person to photograph a single snow crystal in 1885. The site includes a collection of original images of snowflakes which could be used in the classroom to illustrate snowflake structure as well as geometric concepts such as symmetry. A beautiful children’s book, Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, introduces students to Bentley’s life and work and incorporates the history and nature of science into the lesson.

Finally, students can create their own paper snowflakes to model their hexagonal shape. Many variations on these directions exist, and some even have video instructions! Students can also create snowflakes by cutting and gluing together paper-towel rolls although they should take care to make them six-sided. These activities reinforce the science content and allow students to practice measurement skills and demonstrate an understanding of a hexagon and symmetry.

Snowflakes and Standards

This classic winter craft (and the other suggested activities) can meet many different science and math standards, including:

National Science Education Standards: Grades K-4

Physical Science Content Standard: Properties of Objects and Materials

Materials can exist in different states – solid, liquid, and gas. Some common materials, such as water, can be changed from one state to another by heating or cooling.

Science and Technology Content Standard: Understandings about Science and Technology

Women and men of all ages, backgrounds, and groups engage in a variety of scientific and technological work.

Tools help scientists make better observations, measurements, and equipment for investigations. They help scientists see, measure, and do things they could not otherwise see, measure, and do.

History and Nature of Science: Science as a Human Endeavor

Men and women have made a variety of contributions throughout the history of science and technology.

Many people choose science as a career and devote their entire lives to studying it. Many people derive great pleasure from doing science.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards

Geometry

Analyze characteristics and properties of two- and three-dimensional geometric shapes and develop mathematical arguments about geometric relationships.

Apply transformations and use symmetry to analyze mathematical situations.

Measurement

Apply appropriate techniques, tools, and formulas to determine measurements.

Back to You

What about you? Do you have a favorite snowflake resource, lesson plan, or book that you’d like to share? This site won’t be at its best unless we have input from you – the people who make these ideas come alive to your students everyday! Please post a comment to this blog with suggestions, tips, or comments.

And of course, please check back often for our newest post, download the RSS feed for this blog, or request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

That’s it for this time! Until next time, stay cool with this hot topic!

On Wednesday, Feb. 4, Jessica Fries-Gaither will present “Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears: Integrating K-5 Science and Literacy” at the 2009 Educational Technology Conference in Columbus, OH. The presentation is scheduled for 2 pm in room C226. During the session, participants will be introduced to the Beyond Penguins project and the variety of technological tools used to create the magazine and associated content. If you can’t attend the presentation, you can download a pdf of the slides.

Hope to see you there!

The February issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears cyberzine is now available!

Arctic and Antarctic Birds was co-produced with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This partnership allows us to bring you exciting and engaging ideas for incorporating birds into a life sciences unit.

Do you want to know more about birds and their adaptations? This month’s Science Content Knowledge article discusses some of the birds that live in or migrate to the polar regions and how birds stay warm in cold weather.

Follow CLO researchers Gerrit Vyn and Martha Fischer as they travel to Bathurst Island in the high Arctic to record bird and other animal sounds in our Reseacher Stories article.

Learn how citizen-science projects from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology can engage your students and lead to exciting inquiry-based learning. View a sample scientific study designed by fourth-grade students in New York to study bird behavior in cold weather.

Our newest addition to the magazine is a monthly podcast episode. This month, join Gerrit Vyn and Martha Fischer on their Bathurst Island expedition and listen to Jennifer Fee of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology discuss citizen-science projects. You can find the new podcast article in the Professional Learning department. An archive of all our podcast episodes is also available.

Of course, this issue also includes lessons and activities, misconceptions and tools for formative assessment, a virtual bookshelf, and informational text written for students. Use the Feature Story, “The Dance of Life,” to study bird migration and help your students improve their questioning skills by using templates specifically created for use with the article.

Much more awaits you at Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears…check out Arctic and Antarctic Birds today!