Monthly Archives: February 2006

Aaron Doering: Adventure learning in the Arctic

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I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually picture -40°F and roving polar bears when think of the perfect classroom. But for Prof. Aaron Doering and the rest of the GoNorth! team, spending a few months in their arctic classroom is the perfect way to connect with millions of school children from around the world.

Aaron is a proponent of adventure learning, and the GoNorth! team is putting the concept to the test this spring for the second time during a trek from Circle, Alaska to Prudhoe Bay. They’re calling the trip “GoNorth! Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 2006” and along the way the team will be interacting with native peoples, exploring environmental issues, and providing an amazing learning opportunity for any student, teacher, or parent who signs up at their Web site.

It’s not too late to sign up at PolarHusky.com and participate in this year’s trip. There is a ton of free K–12 curriculum at their site that cuts across content areas and will really draw students into the trip and the issues it raises. If nothing else, at least take a look at the huskies. If you and your students check out the site, the frequent trip updates via text, audio, and video will keep you coming back.

Download: STP-AaronDoering (29.5 MB, 39:26)

adventure learning, polarhusky, anwr, online learning, podcast, environmental education

If I was still in the classroom…

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I used to be a high school teacher. I taught 9th grade physical science, physics, a bit of chemistry, and computer programming. During that time my students did countless labs, solved thousands of equations, and witnessed hundreds of demonstrations. I think I did a pretty good job, but if I was in the same job today I think I’d do things quite a bit differently.

Ward Cunningham‘s original WikiWikiWeb was already in existence when I started teaching in the fall of 1995 although almost no one had ever heard of it. I saw it a few years later, but it never occurred to me at the time that such a beast would be a valuable educational tool. If I was a physics teacher today, my students and I would create our own physics textbook in wiki form. We’d have to do lots of experiments since you can’t put an experiment in your book that you’ve never tried yourself. And we’d have to do lots of calculations to find the ones that are just the right level of difficulty and are interesting to students. And of course we’d need to design demonstrations that illustrate the concepts that we’re trying to explain. (And why not create QuickTime movies of the demos while we’re at it so they can be shared easily.) It would be the students’ chance to learn the physics that’s all around them in skateboarding, video games, and DVD players in a way that would be interesting to them.

There’s no shortage of physics wikibooks; or chemistry, or paleoanthropology, or Spanish for that matter. Perhaps we’d contribute our work to the WikiBooks project too. Maybe I’d find another physics teacher somewhere and we’d have our students collaborate on the project.

How would I assess the students? I’m not sure. (Never let assessment questions ruin a really cool idea.) I do know that I don’t get a letter grade at the end of the term from my boss. I get “graded” by having frequent conversations as we collaborate, solve problems, and celebrate successes. Assuming that I have the students working in groups, I don’t see why a similar arrangement wouldn’t work for my course. I suppose I’d be forced to come up with a letter grade at the end of the term, but I’ll bet each student and I could come to an agreement based on their goals and what they produced as part of their team. Sounds like a great way to spend a year in physics class to me.