Discovering the Arctic - refreshed

I went down to the Royal Geographical Society last week to attend the launch of a refreshed Discovering the Arctic website. 

Check it out. 

The content has been updated from the original website, and some more recent additions - including something that I added myself on permafrost back in 2012.

The sections are here now. There is more of a link with the lives of indigenous peoples:

For example, check out this section which looks at how the Arctic can be defined. Where does it start and end? Is it defined by the Arctic Circle?

Discovering the Arctic

Earlier in the year, Year 8 students were asked to make use of the Discovering Antarctica website, which was produced by the RGS-IBG and covers all aspects of living in the frozen continent.

Now that we are starting to switch to the Arctic and the North Pole, Year 8 should make sure that they visit the Discovering the Arctic website.

This provides a range of resources on themes related to living in the Arctic.
It's worth looking at the Living on the Edge section.
Mr. Parkinson wrote one section of this website a few years ago.

Here's another useful map from another site...

Year 8 revision suggestions....

The Year 8 exams will take place after Christmas.

We will have a final 'Geog your memory' (with thanks to Claire Power's students for that name) session next week, and also have some time in the first week back.
There is no prep being set for the time being of course, other than the obvious preparations and revision at some time over your holiday period.

The exams are based on our Pole to Pole unit, and will ask you some questions testing your factual recall, but also regarding your thoughts on the way that the Poles are changing and some of the ways they connect with our daily lives. There will also be questions testing your ability to use data, maps, graphs etc which have been provided by us.

1. Check out the Discovering Antarctica and Discovering the Arctic websites, and explore the interactive elements to revisit ideas such as: why the Poles are so cold, how people are using Polar regions (including tourism, scientific resources and resource extraction) and

2. You'll find no shortage of relevant YouTube clips to watch - or VIMEO tends to have better quality offerings, and also without some of the problems with YouTube comments / ads etc.

For example:


Antarctica from Darek Sepiolo on Vimeo.
This is a short clip inspired by Hans Zimmer's music from "The Thin Red Line". My tribute to great composer and beauty of nature.
3. Climate data
Here's the data for several bases...

Amundsen-Scott (South Pole)
(32 years of data, source: www.antarcticconnection.com )
Month	Mean Temp.	Precipitation	Mean Windspeed
	(degC)	(mm)	(mph)
Jan	-26	0	1.1
Feb	-38	0	0.9
Mar	-52	0	1.4
Apr	-56	0	4.6
May	-56	2	5.4
Jun	-57	0	4.6
Jul	-58	0	5
Aug	-58	0	5
Sep	-58	2	5.7
Oct	-50	0	1.7
Nov	-37	0	1.3
Dec	-26	0	1.1

Choose one and draw a climate graph - line graph for temperatures - remember that zero will not be at the bottom, but part of the way up the graph's axis, and bar graph for precipitation, of which there is very little...

Byrd
(16 years of data, source: www.antarcticconnection.com)
Month	Mean Temp.	Precipitation	Mean Windspeed
	(degC)	(mm)	(mph)
Jan	-14		16
Feb	-18		18
Mar	-26		20
Apr	-28		23
May	-31		24
Jun	-33		23
Jul	-34		21
Aug	-35		24
Sep	-35		23
Oct	-29		23
Nov	-20		20
Dec	-15		16

Or try another base: the data for a range of them can be downloaded from HERE

More to come over Christmas....

There's an app for that...

Year 8s have been exploring the impact of changes in the Arctic on the indigenous peoples. It's worth remembering that there are no indigenous people in the Antarctic, only visitors from many nations.
There are various groups of peoples who live in the Arctic.
A general term is Inuit, but there are many groups stretching into the Russian Arctic which are not related to that group.

The Arctic Centre suggests that around 4 million people are now living in the area, and these are spread around the ocean in an uneven distribution.

The U Arctic Atlas website has some useful maps. These are worth further investigation, as are the links with the maps.

There are limited options for the use of mobile phones in these areas. Not much change of picking up WiFi. We identified, using the Discovering the Arctic website that there is mobile phone coverage within a short distance of Qaanaaq.
What Arctic apps could we design that would help local peoples cope with some of the challenges of living in such an environment. This requires a little bit of creative thought and imagination.

What are some of the challenges ?
- climate change and altering landscapes
- navigation
- hunting and fishing
- communications...
- loneliness
- languages
- the extremes of the weather....

Year 8s were very creative and had some great ideas. I shall be sharing some of them as we develop the ideas further and bring them to a conclusion. Here's a sheet that I am going to use to do some reflection and peer assessment of the finished apps, which will also make a good display when they're finished.

Google 'Blank iPad' for some appropriate images that could be used as a format for the finished work.

Credit to Tony Cassidy for the original idea....

Polar App Store

Discovering the Poles, and some interesting questions...

Some of the Year 8 groups are underway with the Pole to Pole unit. All Year 8 will be onto this next week.
This makes use of the Discovering Antarctica website.
This website is full of interactive elements and really goes into detail on the impact of human use of the Poles.
I contributed some of the teaching materials to the website, and a few other bits when it was first created.

If you are in Year 8, I recommend that you take a look at this website and work through some of the activities as directed for prep. There are plenty of fun games and interactive activities to work with, and we will also be using a tool called TRIPTICO to make our own versions, which will be even better than the ones on the website of course.
There's also a partner site which I worked on called Discovering the Arctic.
I wrote the SWIPA permafrost materials for that website.

See the posters in the Geography rooms for more on these sites...

We'll also be looking at some of the questions that you have about the Poles and trying to answer them...
Here's an interesting question that a student asked teacher Liz Saville, which she shared on Twitter.

The best question posed by my KS3 students today whilst learning about Antarctica ? " what does 'cold' smell like"? That got us thinking....
— liz saville (@liz_saville) September 6, 2013

Can we think of other questions about the Polar regions ?