Knowing the high-energy style of interaction that Alessio
enjoys, I appreciated the humor underlying in his summary of yesterday’s
activities. He writes:
“Entertaining these young humans for 8 hours a day is both
an intense and rewarding activity. Forget about the PowerPoint style lecture
that I am so familiar with. Their attention span lasts no more than 5 minutes.
After that, magnificent phenomena starts to happen: pencils get examined and
broken, paper gets folded, moustaches are being drawn under noses, and objects
starts flying. One soon learns how to identify the signs of an instable boat and
learn how to get them back onto a productive path: “Ok! Let’s play a game!” We
measured air-temperature, emptied our rain gauge, we discussed the concept of
habitat, we drew pictures of polar bears standing on the ice, we measured the
melting of mini-glaciers located in different climates (some of them inside the
classroom some of them outside the classroom), we learned how female and male
emperor penguin find each other, we clay-modeled birds’ feet to figure out
adaptation strategies, we observed rocks, plants and each other’s hair on a
portable microscope and we analyzed the difference between the Arctic and the
Antarctic. As you might guess the comparison between the two hemispheres was
quite imbalanced. The Arctic part of the Venn diagram was enthusiastically
filled by content, the Antarctic… not so much.”
Alessio and others involved in the camp stayed up late last
night putting the finishing touches on the activities for today. Tuesday is
“Permafrost Day”. The kids will model the tundra landscape using clay. Later in
the day they will visit the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) where
scientists from the NGEE Arctic project and other national and international
teams are conducting research this summer. It will be interesting to see how
the kids react to science in the field. Alessio points out that the Arctic is
home to these kids, they have observed polar bears and seals, they dream of
becoming whalers, caribou hunters, and they already maneuver snow machines with
great expertise. There is still much to teach these kids about their frozen
environment; fortunately, Alessio is doing that this week.
 |
| Some highlights of camp Day 2 at Ilisagvik College: modeling various bird feet, looking through microscopes, and collecting precipitation data with a rain gauge. Earth science is fun! Photo courtesy of Skye Sturm |
