From China to Chattanooga, students around the world collaborate in University of Minnesota's adventure learning series
Third year of circumpolar expedition promotes online learning with Polar Husky sled dogs
Contacts: Anitra Budd, College of Education and Human Development, (612) 626-7486, budd0018@umn.edu
Luisa Badaracco, University News Service, (612) 624-1690, luisab@umn.edu
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL ( 3/3/2008 ) -- The University of Minnesota, in collaboration with NOMADS Adventure & Education, announced on Monday the launch of the 2008 GoNorth! adventure learning expedition. The third in the five-year adventure learning series, this year's live program will take Team GoNorth! on a 1000-mile, 14-week scientific and cultural voyage traversing the Arctic's most developed region: Fennoscandia, the Arctic regions of Sweden, Norway, and Finland. The free K-12 education program began on Feb. 10, 2008.
Traveling by dog team, GoNorth! gives up-close and personal insights to environmental issues and Arctic realities, including the drastic Arctic climate change. Reports from the trail are then used to help validate current scientific research on climate change.
The largest K-12 adventure learning program in the world, GoNorth! is used in more than 3,300 classrooms in 50 U.S. states and on six continents in 29 countries around the world, including Australia, China, Saudi Arabia, Korea, Pakistan, Brazil, Sweden and Canada.
"It is an incredibly diverse online community of learners, learning not only from the curriculum and topic experts, but maybe most importantly learning from each other in the many collaborative opportunities within the online learning environment," said series education director Aaron Doering, an associate professor of Learning Technologies in the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development and a pioneer in the educational theory of adventure learning. Throughout his time on the expedition, Doering will collect and distribute video of interviews and research via satellite.
The international team for GoNorth! Fennoscandia 2008 is being lead again by world-renowned explorer Paul Pregont. In the past 15 years, Pregont has spent more than 900 days in the expedition tent, traveling 15 extensive expeditions in the circumpolar Arctic - an unmatched feat. He will be joined in the expedition's entirety by GoNorth! program director and Danish native Mille Porsild and Finnish native Aksana Kurola. Doering and Los Angeles-based teacher Wendy Gorton will be traveling for two weeks of the expedition.
GoNorth! Fennoscandia 2008 seeks to answer the question of deforestation -- the significance of forests in our daily lives and our role as consumers in pursuing sustainable development. Driven by the adventure learning expedition and in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA), field studies focusing on the realities of climate change will engage more than three million students in real-world social and natural science.
Equipped with high-speed satellite communication equipment, GoNorth! will provide indigenous communities along their route the opportunity to communicate online with its worldwide audience young and old. Though the journey will cross the borders of three nations, it will take place in the realm of one people - the Saami - in their ancestral lands of Sapmi. An area the size of Montana (approximately 150,000 square miles), Sapmi is believed to have first been settled at the end of the last ice age, roughly 11,000 years ago. The last nomadic herders in Europe today still migrating with their reindeer, the Sami people are the only ethnic group in Europe to be recognized as a native people. Today the Sami Council and the Sami parliaments of Finland, Norway and Sweden are advocating for the Sami people to freely determine their own economic, social and cultural development and control their own natural resources.
"The main purpose is for the team and the panel of scientists to monitor climate change and other environmental issues," said IT Coordinator Robin Finlay of Brisbane, Australia, "but GoNorth! has opened it up so students all over the world can benefit. It is a unique opportunity which every school on the planet should take up."
For more information about GoNorth! Fennoscandia 2008 visit the GoNorth! Web site at www.polarhusky.com.
About NOMADS
NOMADS Adventure & Education is a forerunner in the concept of adventure learning. For the past 14 years, NOMADS has given students worldwide opportunities to collaborate and learn while participating in Arctic exploration.
About the College of Education and Human Development
The College of Education and Human Development is a world leader in discovering, creating, sharing, and applying principles and practices of multiculturalism and multidisciplinary scholarship to advance teaching and learning and to enhance the psychological, physical, and social development of children, youth, and adults across the lifespan in families, organizations and communities.
