8 February 2007: Fairbanks (Dave Andersen, Base Camp Manager)

Try this experiment: Come up with a few simple projects for school kids to do in conjunction with a cool Arctic expedition and post them on the world wide web with your name, email, and cell phone number attached. Then stand back. Here is a sample of School Outreach activity in the last 48 hours.

• A teacher in Vermont confirms receipt of her classroom kit and is excited about participating.

• A teacher in Fort McPherson has been talking to our participant in Inuvik and wants to know more about the project.

• Teachers in Ontario Canada, Eagle River Alaska, Porterville California, and Portage Michigan, have somehow hit on the website and are requesting tracking kits.

• Maps arrive at CRREL and I spend my lunch hour marking route lines.

• Afternoon emails......the Canadian regional director of the Global Confluence Project responds enthusiastically to my inquiry about confluence prospects.

• An email from USFWS seems concerned that we might trespass on refuge lands without a permit.....forward this to Matthew.

• I call Old Crow School to obtain their mailing address...bad connection, call back.

• A teacher in Palm Beach Gardens Florida is already working on her poster and has questions about content and procedure.

• A teacher in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut emails to arrange a classroom visit from the crew when we pass through that community.......we don't pass through Gjoa Haven.

• Old Crow responds by email with complete contact information.

• For the third time I try making phone calls to the numbers listed for Baker Lake schools....no luck, the recording on the other end is in Inuktitut and tells me the call cannot be completed as dialed. We still need Baker Lake teacher contacts.

• An artist in Whitehorse emails and wants to know if we would be willing to provide digital images of the remote barrenlands landscape for a multi-media art project he is working--forward this to Matthew.

• Teachers in Beaverton, Oregon and Springfield, Virginia are the 46th and 47th classrooms to request tracking kits. I estimate we currently have over 1300 students participating in expedition outreach activities. I'm not sure how it all works, but the world wide web is a wonder. 

• A researcher at the University of Washington arranges for snow and soot samples to make it from Daring Lake to Toronto without thawing.

• A design for pins and patches is finalized with a commercial graphics company and these are ordered so we can give them out at schools.

• Address labels for the classroom kits are typed and printed.