Arctic climate curriculum geared for rural students

By Amy Hartley, Geophysical Institute
January 2006

Sea ice cover is decreasing, lakes are drying up, ecosystems are changing and thawing permafrost is creating changes in water supply. For residents living in Northwestern Alaska, life has become quite different from what it was years ago.

The Arctic Climate Modeling Program, a teacher training and curriculum development project designed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, aims to equip 1,700 students from the region with the math, science and technology skills they need to better understand their changing surroundings. The project offers a progression of learning for K-12 students, helping 165 teachers in the Bering Straits School District guide them to think like scientists, learn the basics of arctic climate and then ultimately analyze the data and work with current research in the field of climate change.

The innovative curriculum is brand new, but already teachers and developers say that ACMP’s format works well for rural students. Hands-on activities, practical use of equipment and involvement with one’s own community provide a curriculum finely tailored to village life.

Kathy Berry Bertram is the principal investigator for the $1.2 million project, which is funded through the National Science Foundation. The project falls under the unique Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) arm that is meant to bridge education and technology. Bertram directs ACMP from her office at the Geophysical Institute’s Information and Education Outreach Office. She says the program links science instruction in public schools with the culture of rural Alaska communities near the Bering Strait.

"The weather is something everyone in the community is interested in, from elders to very young children," she said. "ACMP sandwiches science lessons between research conducted in the Bering Straits and historical Native observations."

Children involved in ACMP collect weather data, study sea ice conditions and learn from current scientific research. The village communities have a vested interest in these issues, so children have a strong support network for their ACMP studies.

Jess Ryan, a writer and curriculum developer at the Geophysical Institute, has helped design 10 lessons for the program since September 2005. One of her goals is to use practical examples from students’ communities to showcase math and science concepts.

"Science isn’t this abstract thing that happens out there. It’s actually surrounding you at all times," Ryan said. "Your community is a basis of scientific knowledge. If you look into it, you can learn about all sorts of things--sea ice, pollution and what affects your community’s watershed."

Ryan and her colleagues are committed to using examples in each ACMP lesson that are relevant and recognizable to students of various ages. If kids have a closer connection to the issues, the places and subject matter, Ryan says this can be used as foundation for the science concepts to come.

"In so many curricula out there students are learning science through things that they are not directly familiar with. ACMP students are not learning about the Mississippi River, they’re learning about their own surroundings--the Bering Strait," she said. "You can’t expect kids to have a frame of reference for a place they’ve never been to or seen."

Teacher Bob Woolf teaches middle and high school science at John Apangalook School in the village of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island. He thinks the curriculum developers have done a great job and he’s looking forward to next year’s lessons, which will tie directly to research projects underway in the Bering Strait region.

"It’s going to be fun to see how the curriculum changes over time, especially as the program incorporates more global warming issues that affect our region and the science and society issues facing our area," Woolf said.

Woolf’s students have a rich Siberian Yupik culture that relies heavily on whaling and walrus hunting. This ancient hunting culture has been blindsided by climate warming that has dramatically changed sea ice conditions in the Arctic. Years ago, bowhead whales and walrus were easier to harvest because they were forced to follow leads--openings in the sea ice--that brought them closer to the coastline. Today, these leads through the ice are so large that hunters have to travel great distances to find these animals.

"When you’re in a rural community right on the sea, it’s important to understand these issues because warming is changing coastlines,” Bertram said. “Sea ice patterns are different and all of this has a direct effect on subsistence lifestyles. This is affecting their food sources, their mainstay--it’s affecting everything."

Changes to every aspect of rural living are what make the Arctic Climate Modeling Program so relevant for Alaska Native students living near the Bering Strait. The Arctic Climate Modeling Program equips them with knowledge about what is contributing to many of the changes in their culture. It also provides students access to a handful of high-tech tools currently used by scientists to understand conditions of the arctic climate.

Through the Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA) at the University of Alaska, students and teachers can examine satellite data in near real-time. This access allows users to examine current weather patterns and the movement and extent of sea ice influencing their region.

Another innovative partnership forged through ACMP involves NOAA and the National Weather Service. By next summer automated weather stations will be installed at each of the 15 schools in the Bering Strait School District. Weather stations will collect data from Savoonga to St. Michael, and students will be able to access the data for their studies. This data can also be used by the research community. Some of the weather stations will collect data that was never before available to the National Weather Service or other research professionals.

Eric Muehling, a multimedia developer working on the project, wrote a computer program that will collect information from the automated weather stations and then pipe it to a large online database on the ACMP website. This database is then able to produce line and bar graphs, so students, community members or scientists are able to view weather trends over a period of time.

"What excites me about this project is that we’re collecting data in remote Alaska that nobody has collected before," Muehling said. "It’s going to benefit research for years to come and I get to be a part of that."

In addition to the automated information collected by each weather station, students themselves will add observational data about weather conditions, including sea ice conditions, snow depth, sky conditions and visibility.

The ACMP is different from other science curricula because it reinforces students’ connection to their community, relates directly to professional research projects and establishes an on-going network of data display and scientist participation. Using data from GINA, students can view sea ice and weather conditions in real time. Insight into these issues benefits students’ ACMP studies and it also allows them to help their community be prepared when it comes to hunting or severe weather.

The connection to community is also fortified by the program’s inclusion of traditional methods for predicting weather. Students must compare and contrast the ways of their elders with the new ways of analyzing climate. This aspect is what Wales teacher Eric Lowry is particularly excited about.

"It’s bringing the old world and new world models together," Lowry said by phone from his classroom at Kingikmiut School. "It’s totally new to the students, as far as being exposed to something like this. Plus, it’s interactive."

Lowry’s students, and others learning from ACMP, are required to interview elders in their community for portions of their class work. This effort resonates with students because they’re finding that their elders remember conditions that were quite different from those they are currently experiencing.

Eventually students will share findings from their ACMP lessons with people in their villages via community presentations that will showcase students’ work and prompt young people to educate their friends and family about arctic climate change.

"Teacher turnover in the Bering Strait School District is high,” said Lori Schoening, education and assessment coordinator at the Geophysical Institute. “This means that in some villages, new teachers are coming in each year. ACMP lessons will provide new teachers an avenue for connecting with community members and elders. Community involvement creates community interest, which increases student interest."

Greg Johnson, Bering Strait School District’s director of curriculum, said his district backs ACMP because of the support offered to the students and teachers by the Geophysical Institute team.

"The program is being designed and built by people who want to bring solid science knowledge to children, not by a content provider whose bottom line is making a profit," he said.

A number of scientists from UAF are involved with the ACMP. They aid in lesson design and also provide mentor lectures to all of the participating schools through videoconferencing. Atmospheric scientist and Associate Professor Cathy Cahill provided the first mentor lecture in November. After the lecture she said she was impressed with the inquisitive nature of the students and their interest in arctic climate.

"They were asking good solid science questions, even at a young age. Any time I work with a school and get that type of response, I get excited. It’s obvious these kids observe," Cahill said. "I often teach college classes where kids aren’t quite this engaged."

The ACMP reinforces relationships among students and their teachers, their community and scientists, by using a topic that all of these groups are vested in--the changing arctic climate. Bertram thinks this is key.

"I believe all students have a natural aptitude for science, they just need to be taught using a vehicle that interests them," Bertram said. "And what’s more interesting than a phenomenon that is affecting every aspect of their lives?"

For more information, please contact:

• Kathy Berry Bertram, director, Information and Education Outreach Office, Geophysical Institute, (907) 474-7798, kbertram@gi.alaska.edu
• Glenda Findlay, Program Coordinator, (907 474-2722, glenda.findlay@gi.alaska.edu
• Amy Hartley, public information officer, Geophysical Institute, (907) 474-5823, amy.hartley@gi.alaska.edu

Other useful links:

• Arctic Climate Modeling Program
• ACMP’s Weather Data: Current weather data from various communities, graphs comparing the data and wind speed and direction for the Bering Strait Region are not available online at this time.
• ACMP and the International Polar Year: Scientists researching climate change in the Arctic may use data collected by ACMP students. This data will prove useful as scientists all over the world conduct research to better understand the Earth’s polar regions during the International Polar Year, which runs from 2007-2008. Learn more about IPY.
• Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
• Bering Strait School District
• Geophysical Institute
• Geographic Information Network of Alaska
• International Arctic Research Center
• ITEST Learning Resource Center article on name change to STELAR
• STELAR - STEM Learning and Research Center
• NOAA/Alaska Region Headquarters, National Weather Service

Photos courtesy Geophysical Institute Information and Education Outreach Office.