Submitted by Karl Torstein Hetland
Project manager K12, IPY Norway

"Thank you for some fantastic days at Svalbard"
"The teacher workshop at Svalbard was very inspiring"
"This was a fantastic workshop - I feel filled with energy and experience - wonderful colleagues (Danish participant)"

This was some of the feedback we got from the teacher workshop at Svalbard, which 22 Norwegian and 5 Danish teachers attended for a week in August. There were not many hours to be alone during the week, but it was always daylight so it was not too busy.

The workshop started in Oslo with polar history at the Fram museum and the Ski Museum. We would like to say a big thank you to The Foundation for Norwegian-Danish collaboration for letting us stay at Lysebu in Oslo.

The first two days we stayed at UNIS (The University Centre in Svalbard). On Monday we focused on toxic chemicals and the school project Global POP.

Tuesday was dedicated to the activities at UNIS in IPY and in the afternoon we visited EISCAT.

On Wednesday we had an excursion to Barentsburg and the glacier Esmarkbreen. That was the same day that a Russian vessel was hit by the ice close to another glacier. You never know when a glacier calves!

On Thursday we were invited by Store Norske to visit he coal mine Svea. We had a fantastic trip with a plane from Longyearbyen to Svea. The day we visited the mine it was closed down so we got all the way into the mine. Great!

Friday was the big adventure day. We started at 7 am and went by fast boats for 40 minutes. Then we walked in Svalbard nature together with 3 guards/guides with rifles. We ended up looking for old dinosaurs together with specialists. Walking back another way and was back in Longyearbyen 1.30 am on Saturday morning. The plane left at 5.00 am!

See pictures from this event and all the other events here and here.