During survival training known as Happy Camper School.
ANDRILL (ANtarctic Geologic DRILLing) is in Antarctica for the second back-to-back drilling season. It is a multi-national science research team drilling rock cores from the McMurdo Sound area. With each new meter of core recovered, the scientists are working to unlock the climate secrets stored there. By understanding past climates, they hope to fill in missing pieces of the climate puzzle that will help us explain the rapid changes around the globe we are experiencing today and also help predict what may happen in the future.
ANDRILL has created an opportunity for educators to gain a research experience by joining the ARISE (ANDRILL Immersion Experience for Educators) program. Eight teachers from four countries (Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and the US) are spending half of their day working on a science discipline team studying the core, and then work the other half of their day taking a geoscience course taught by the scientists and also writing blogs, conducting tele- and video-conferences with classes back home, and designing inquiry activities to transfer the science to classrooms around the world.
We are very lucky to be working with a science team that values education outreach. Classrooms around the world are invited to follow the adventure through videos, pictures and blogs at ANDILL.org. We would love to hear from you!
Joanna Hubbard is covered in mud that is million of years old after spending the day sawing samples from the core that will be studied by the scientists.
Kate Pound and Louise Huffman work to develop some hands-on activities using simple supplies from the galley. In the process, we were given kitchen help hats to wear.
During our geoscience course, Rich Levy, staff scientist, works with Kate Pound and the rest of the ARISE team using maps of the area and then a hike outside.