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JANUARY 10, 1995 UPDATES-LFA-5
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**** FLASH: From the South Pole ****
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We are anxiously watching the skies hoping that the GOES Satellite comes around at the right time to bring you Live from Antarctica: SPACESHIP SOUTH POLE today 5:30 EST.
The Live from Antarctica project has three basic components (described in more detail in the Teacher's Guide) and we send these weekly messages to keep you informed of our progress in each area.
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|+ Television +| |+ Telecomputing +| |+ Teachers +|
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---====| T E L E V I S I O N |=====---
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Program 3: SPACESHIP SOUTH POLE, January 10th, 5:30 EST *** TODAY ***
We know that many of you in classrooms are disappointed by the timing of today's program. It is not a free choice.
Our journey to the South Pole is up, up, and away on the satellite, GOES-2. And to make it down to exact location of the South Pole, well we have to be willing to travel on the time schedule of the satellite.
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The GOES-2 satellite has outlived its original mission of obtaining weather data and has drifted to an orbital position in which it is "visible" for 4-5 hours per day from the pole. So our satellite journey this remote place ends up not being during normal school hours. And we are working round the clock to try to have everything in place to catch a ride on this information pathway as it is projected across the sky. We will need a bit of luck...
We know that some east coast schools have taken advantage of the later time to turn the viewing of Live from Antarctica into a "family science night". You can bet that one group of 3rd grade students in Virginia won't be worried about the late hour. They are eager to see their very own teacher, April Lloyd, who has preceded them to the South Pole. And she is as eager to reach out across the world and teach them as they are to discover what she has been up to without them.
But that is not the only reunion we will see. Elizabeth Felton is a 17 -year-old student who has left her classmates and is on the "ICE" at the South Pole. She will be telling her fellow "Space Explorers" in Chicago, and the rest of us, what she has learned from looking out into space from this remote place. She will also help us find out why the South Pole moves each year.
And while both April Lloyd's 3rd graders and Elizabeth's Felton's classmates will be looking out to the South Pole, they will also have another focus of interest--each other. The older students have been working closely with April's students sharing their knowledge over computer networks. So they will be excited to see their partners.
The students in Hawaii have a personal link of a different kind. The students have had the advantage of working in the classrooms with Joe Ferraro, an architect of the new South Pole station. He has been donating his time to help students construct and test their own models for research stations to help them understand how weather and climate "shape" buildings. The Hawaiian students are eager to see the Dome at the South Pole and tell you what they have learned.
Anywhere along this live communication path,
something could go wrong.
We have the back-up date of January 12th. If we find we cannot establish a good audio and video signal in the test period before the broadcast, we will use the time to share materials we have on the South Pole and try for a "live" link again two days later, on the 12th. If we have a good signal -- as preliminary tests have succeeded in establishing -- and lose audio or video after the program has begun, we will continue with students and live guests who are waiting at U.S. sites.
Other highlights:
How the exact location of the geographic South Pole is calculated
Astronomy at the Pole
The rigors of life at the end of the earth
Christmas Eve at the >South< Pole
The first-ever "round the world" unicycle odyssey!
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We provide the following activities:
A conference for updates and journals (918 subscribers)
An interactive environment for teachers (239 subscribers)
Four Learning Centers for student exchanges (about 25 classes in each)
Students' questions to the Antarctic Team (over 200 questions)
Weekly Challenge Questions for students (see below)
Mail list for receiving all question-answer pairs (77 subscribers)
A searchable encyclopedia of question-answer pairs (114+)
Research Journals written by our Antarctic Explorers
Online Teacher's guide (50 pages)
More activities to extend program content in the classroom
Resource materials on Antarctica
Links to world-wide resources available on the Internet
World Wide Web (http://passporttoknowledge.com/antarctica)
WEEKLY REPORT
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This week's Challenge Question has been posed by NOAA Lt. Katy McNitt (see FOLLOW THE EXPLORERS... on our gopher for biographical information on Katy and to read her Journals about life at the Pole):
Good luck... and be aware that some of these researchers are pretty sneaky in the way they pose these questions!"
Research Journals
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We hope you are enjoying reading the research journals. This week we have had journals entries from:
Jim Sweitzer (one per day!), Elizabeth Felton, April Lloyd, Terry Trimingham and Dave Whitner
+++++++++++++ Live From Antarctica project is now +++++++++++++++++++++
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We are encouraging student participation the Learning Centers. Teachers report that they are so busy with all of the interactive components of the Live from Antarctica field trip in their classrooms that they have not had much time for "cross classroom collaboration." We know the timing of these programs falls at a difficult time for coordination of activities but then, all travel to Antarctica is influenced by factors that are not easily controlled.
If your students have comments or observations on the content or subjects of program 3 that they want to discuss with other students they can reach the over 700 students in the Learning Center.
They can find out if other students agree or disagree with their observations or comments.
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| TODAY AT 5:30 EST WATCH FOR |
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| A L T E R N A T E D A T E J A N . 1 2 TH |
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