Past Programs
Fourteen years of Arctic expeditions linked with student and classrooms - we have been involved with online learning and annual high Arctic expeditions since 1992, practically from the day it was even possible to send out anything by satellite from the field. In 1992 the computer was a 50 lbs. metal box built by US military agents and powered by three people taking turns on a hand-cranker outside the tent. A ten minute window catching a satellite on the horizon would allow for a four-letter predetermined code to be sent out. Then, in 1995 we were part of the team that sent out the first digital photo from the North Pole and within a few years PolarHusky.com came to be.
In 2001, we facilitated the first-ever adventure learning program, Arctic Blast 2001, traveling by dog team on a 4-month journey, 2000 miles from Churchill, Manitoba to the most northern community of North America, Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island, Canada. This ground-breaking program was utilized in 1000 + classrooms.
With Arctic Blast 2001 were the first to introduce the use of Collaboration Zones and Online Chats as adventure learning teaching tools in K-12. Since 2001, three consecutive adventure learning programs were delivered. Pimagihowin 2002 and 2003 were 12 week-programs traveling with the Oji-Cree in the Hudson Bay region of the Nishnawbee-Aski Nation in Manitoba, Canada for two seasons. Arctic Transect 2004 was a 6-month, 2000 mile traverse of Nunavut in the high Canadian Arctic. This program cemented the outreach of adventure learning with 1800 schools participating. Outside the classroom walls it garnered more than 20 million online visitors, 95 million media impressions, and speaking engagements to Senators at Capitol Hill and House of Lords, London (UK). The program earned the IBM Beacon Award as the premier K-12 initiative worldwide utilizing IBM and the site at PolarHusky.com was selected Yahoo Site resulting in 1 million unique visitors in a single day.Arctic Transect 2004 was a 6-month, 2,000 mile traverse of the Canadian Arctic from Yellowknife, NWT to Pond Inlet, Nunavut. In 2006 we launched the new adventure learning project GoNorth! a five-part series around the circumpolar Arctic. The first of the five programs in the series, GoNorth! Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 2006 took place February 12 through May of 2006. In real time, a team of educators and explorers traveled by dog sled from Circle, Alaska across the northeastern corner of Alaska - 5000 ft over Brooks Mountain Range through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -to their final location of Prudhoe Bay on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, stopping at five Native communities (and one oil platform) along the way. Currently underway, since February 12 and running through May is GoNorth! Chukotka 2007 a 1000-mile journey dog sledding the Chukotka region in Russia. The following three programs in the GoNorth! adventure learning series will bring focus on Fennoscandia, (2008), Greenland (2009), and Nunavut, Canada (2010). | Featured past programs: |
