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Resources from the NSDL Collection related to Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, Seminar 1: Polar Geography

For the recording of this seminar, go to the archive on the NSTA Learning Center.

Engage in further professional development opportunities related to Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears on June 4, 2008, 7 pm Eastern by joining us on Tapped In. Tapped In is an online professional development service with scheduled events on a host of topics for educators. For this session, we will focus on the June/July 2008 issue on climate and weather. Go to the Tapped In site to sign up

Learn more about our presenters through our blog, Expert Voices: Careers in Science as our presenters share their stories. Read, share and comment on this ongoing blog for the web seminar series.



BEYOND PENGUINS AND POLAR BEARS

Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, the online magazine for elementary educators funded by the National Science Foundation launched March 2008 with monthly issues on a variety of topics related to the polar regions and strategies to integrate polar science and literacy. Seminar presenter Jessica Fries-Gaither serves as the Project Director of Beyond Penguins.

If you want news of current events or information related to the polar regions, you can subscribe to the Beyond Penguins blog.

The magazine is divided into different departments, one of them being activities related to science and literacy integration in curricula.

Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane Pollock discuss nine research-based strategies for increasing student achievement in their book, Classroom Instruction That Works which you can learn more from Issue 1 of Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears.

To find current events, instructional materials and research for educators in mathematics, science, and reading, the Ohio Resource Center at The Ohio State University is an excellent resource. The Center serves as the primary collaborator in creating the Beyond Penguins cyberzine.

The Byrd Polar Research Center is another co-collaborator on the project. The Center is also located at The Ohio State University and is a leader in polar and alpine research. Web Seminar presenter Dr. Carol Landis is the Education Coordinator at the Center.

RESOURCES ON ANTARCTICA AND THE ARCTIC

The Byrd Polar Research Center has a section of polar resources called "Polar Pointers".

To get a better sense of what Antarctica looks like, refer to the map from Enchanted Learning and the movie from the NASA Image Exchange (NIX) collection or the map from USGS, Antarctica in Context.

The British Antarctic Survey has one of the best one-stop shopping about Antarctica available without commercial interest.

To identify animals living in the Antarctic region, the food web from the Classroom Antarctica site gives a detailed looked at life down south.

The Sea ice decline animation shows the change of ice cover in the Arctic. You can find sea level rise maps showing the impact of ice melt around the world from CReSIS, the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets.

There are 2 Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites in Antarctica and one for the arctic. In Antarctica, there are studies at Palmer Station on the Antarctic Peninsula that focuses on the marine environment and the McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER, which focuses on the extreme conditions of the dry valleys (part of the 2% of Antarctica that is not covered by ice).

The Lost Seal is a children's story by Diane McKnight, a scientist studying Antarctica. The story recounts the
true story of the first live seal documented by researchers in the McMurdo Dry Valleys region.

For more information on the Southern Ocean, view the site from the Australian Antarctic Division.

OTHER RESOURCES

For background information related to global warming, check out the podcasts from the University Corporation of Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) on the NSDL on iTunes U section of iTunes.

Windows to the Universe, also from UCAR, is an excellent resource on earth and space science at all levels from beginners to advanced. Resources are also in Spanish. There is a separate section dedicated to the Polar Regions.

The quote used in the presentation from Galen Rowell's book, "Poles Apart":

The first step toward understanding the polar regions is to develop a sense of place about the Arctic and Antarctic that makes them as separate in our minds as Austria and Australia, New York and San Francisco, or the Himalaya and the Adirondacks.

Questions? Comments? Contact Robert Payo, NSDL Education and Outreach Specialist