The Polar Bear project is an education project, where schools interact with a remote field team, through live broadcasts, interaction via website and internet meetings, using satellite and other field reporting technology. The students tell the field team what materials they need. The field team finds it with the hunters, reindeer herders and their communities, using dog sleds, boats and snow scooters. The raw material from the field, the interaction between students and field and the students final results are all stored on a central website. This builds an open learning resource, directed by the needs of the students, with real, up-to-date material. Photos ...

International Polar Year (IPY), which extends from March 2007 through to March 2009, is a worldwide initiative involving thousands of scientists from over 60 countries and focuses on both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Although it is called

Cape Farewell Education aims to: facilitate learning about climate change and participation in the climate change debate among teachers and pupils in UK schools. give school students a voice in the climate change debate and to enable them to take what they have learnt and talked about back home into their communities and families spread enthusiasm and strategies for learning about climate change throughout UK schools. We have a number of resources available to teachers and pupils Life in the Water is a GSCE Science resource commissioned by Nuffield Curriculum Centre and developed with scientists at the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton as part of the 21st centu...

An essay has just been published in March issue of the InfoNorth section of the journal "Arctic", published by the Arctic Institute of North America, on the history of research at McCall Glacier, Alaska. McCall Glacier, located in the eastern Brooks Range of northern Alaska, has the longest and most complete history of scientific research of any glacier in the U.S. Arctic. Spanning the period from the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957-58 to the Fourth International Polar Year (IPY) in 2007-08, this research has resulted in perhaps the best record of recent climate change and its impacts in this region of the Arctic. Creation of this record played a major role in the lives ...

WHITEHORSE, YUKON. The exciting start of the 2007 Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race is only days away and as the 28 mushers make their final preparations for the epic two-week journey, along with dog food, booties and trail supplies, they will be carrying something very special in their sleds this year. Commemorative Yukon Quest envelopes bearing Canada Post Corporation International Polar Year (IPY) stamps will be carried by each of the 28 sled dog teams between the Whitehorse race start this coming Saturday and the mid-way point in Dawson City, Yukon next week. The historic and well-traveled envelopes will then be presented to an IPY Canadian National Committee member at the Yukon IPY launch celebration on March 1, 2007 at the Westmark Whitehorse H...

Children in Kent will be the first to take part in a unique educational project to link schools in Britain with those in the Arctic. The project, called "Arctic Voice", aims to teach children at both primary and secondary level about the effects of climate change and the impact it is having on the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of the Arctic. Schools will be linked through the Internet, allowing children in Kent and elsewhere in the UK the opportunity to talk directly to Inuit school children in Greenland and Arctic Canada, and so begin a dialogue between their communities. The project is supported by Jonathon Porritt, the head of the government's sustainable development commission, who describ...

Gretel Ehrlich, award-winning author, has received a National Geographic Expeditions Grant for the International Polar Year 2007 during which she will make a circumpolar journey to talk with indigenous Arctic people at the top of the world about how their lives are being affected by the climate crisis. Ehrlich will travel from Arctic Alaska, across Nunavut, to NW Greenland, northwestern Russia, and Chukotka in NE Siberia, traveling by skin boat, fixed wing plane, helicopter, reindeer, and dogsled, gathering traditional and ecological knowledge from elders, hunters, and village people as they face the crisis of extinction of a culture and an entire ecosystem. Farthest North: THE END OF ICE will be a book, a magazine piece, a website, and a documentary film...

One of the best things about being a UNIS student is the opportunities one gets. Usually this involves knowing somebody who knows somebody who needs some help or a field assistant. That’s exactly how I got the chance to boat- and dog-sit on the east coast. Eric Brossier and France Pinzon du Sel, who have let their boat freeze in for the 3rd overwintering on Svalbard, went to Tromsø for a couple of weeks and needed someone to look after their beloved Vagabond, a 15.3m long boat designed for sailing in waters with ice. What luck for three Arctic-loving girls like Sanja (Finnish), Helle...

The International Polar Year has begun. What a week! With US and UK launches on the Monday stirring up media attention, followed by an event in Portugal on the Wednesday and over 20 more national events on the day itself, March 1st 2007, we definitely hit the news! While traveling to Paris with Nicola, to prepare for the international launch, the phone didn't stop ringing, both sides of the Channel Tunnel and even on the Paris subway system! I was contacted by journalists as diverse as New Zealand Radio, an In-flight magazine, BBC World Service, Vatican Radio, Al Jazeera English, an Italian science magazine, Chinese TV networks, and Scientific American to name a few. During the International Ceremony itself, my phone kept shaking, and afterwards, on a tour of Paris, I saw ...

Thank-you to everyone who was involved with launch events, who launched virtual balloons, who launched real balloons (see the Swedish launch web-cast!), those behind the scenes, and those on stage. IPY Celebrations around the world on March 1st, and throughout this week, have been a huge success. You can watch those you missed on the Arctic Portal, or still launch your virtual balloon now, and throughout IPY, to recognise the importance of the polar regions to the whole planet. Here is a map showing balloons that have been launched around the world (you can zoom in on where you live or zoom out to see the world map!): ...