Polar Week Highlights - March 2012

Here are some of the highlights of activities that were reported back to us after the International Polar Week March 2012. There were lots more however, and we thank all of our members helping us celebrate this week!

• APECS Portugal – Educational Resources

  During the Polar Week, Portuguese earlier career scientists introduced the polar regions and their research to the young students of ages between 6 and 15 years old also to grade students. The week started with Ana Salomé presented her work on the APECS web seminar dedicated to Education & Outreach. During the web seminar, that counted with the presence of representatives of other Education & Outreach Programs, such as Antony Jinman from Education through experience (UK) and Janet Warburton from PolarTREC (USA), Ana had the chance to present both material and activities created for the national IPY E&O programme Latitude60! and the main results and successful experiences achieved during the project.
  In the same week, the researcher José Xavier, under his projects PENGUIN, CEPH, ICED and PSPE, visited 4 elementary schools in Coimbra (centre of Portugal) and Algarve (South Portugal), presenting the polar regions and his science to more than 500 students between 6 and 12 years old. These presentations followed a groups of lectures in November (prior to the most recent Antarctic expedition, when those schools gave him their school flag) focusing on the work on penguins biodiversity in relation to climate change and returned the school flag, signed by most scientists. During his visit to schools, José Xavier had the chance to participate in lectures, music concerts and an exhibition “A Travel to Antarctica”.
  In the morning of the 26th of March , João Agrela and Miguel Guerreiro, young researchers from the Research Group on Antarctic environment and climatic changes of the University of Lisbon, spent the morning with students from several schools of Sintra, showing what they do in their research in the Antarctic region. There, João and Miguel presented some lectures and activities about permafrost to 140 teenagers.
  Two days later, João Agrela gave a lecture to graduate students and other earlier career scientists at the Instituto de Geografia e Ordenamento do Território, in the University of Lisbon. Here, he talk about his colaboration in the first Portuguese Antarctic Campaign 2011-12, during which he spent more than two months in fieldwork in the bases of Linvingston and King George under the auspices of the projects Permantar and Holoantar.

• Connecting with the Poles Webinar

  During Polar Week March 2012, in collaboration with ARCUS and PolarTREC, APECS hosted two webinars on 20 March and on 22 March, connecting teachers, students, educators and communicators with polar researchers in the Arctic and the Antarctic.

• Outreach collection

  Introducing the Polar Week Collection of resources that celebrate the Poles. APECS joined forces with ARCUS and PolarTREC to put together an archive of activities and presentations on polar topics that we hoped will help people celebrate the poles on a global scale, throughout Polar Week and beyond. 

• APECS Webinar “What EOC Means to APECS”

  The APECS Education and Outreach Committee organized a webinar on Monday 19 March to share experiences on how APECS members are active in education and outreach events all year as well as to learn about outreach efforts, outreach events and how you can do your own outreach activities.
  For the webinar we were joined by three Education and Outreach gurus who shared their outreach experiences, and tips and tricks to get more involved.
  Our speakers were:
  - Ana Salomé is Manager of Science and Technology at the Portuguese Polar Program (PROPOLAR) coordinated by Dr Gonçalo Vieira. She is doing her masters in Geografical Information Systems and Spatial Modelling applied to Planning at the University of Lisbon.
  - Anthony Jinman is the founder of the organization 'Education through Expeditions'. Education Through Expeditions has given over 200 school talks and workshops on polar and marine science and expedition life to date.
  - Janet Warburton is a Project Manager for the PolarTREC program at the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS). Janet has managed the education programs at ARCUS since 2000 and in that time has helped send dozens of teachers on research expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic.