Arctic Roll-Ice cream at the Arctic circle and other tales

Categories: s1 and s2

Today, as planned, we had a live text chat via twitter with Alastair Humphreys of the Catlin Arctic Survey. Despite this originally being scheduled for 20 minutes, we managed to have a discussion which lasted the entire period. Alastair had sent a nice period starter video, which introduced the class to him personally, the base that we would be talking to him from and the ferocious Arctic weather (although to be fair, that was probably mild). I was really pleased at the high quality of questions that the class had provided, and we managed to have a fair chunk of these answered over the time we had, something which Alastair very obligingly got up at 2.30am in the morning to do. His tweet about the time actually set the scene very well. Although it was so early in the morning, it was light and a positively tropical minus 7 ;) Many of the exchanges afterwards were equally at odds with what the class were expecting to find. The title actually refers to the fact that parts of the expedition have their own cook who makes bread and ice cream (stored outside)! The exchange gave a valuable insight into the work of the expedition, the lifestyle and drive of those on the team and the scientific importance of their presence on the ice. It provided a nice medium to not only bring an organisation/individual into the class that might otherwise be difficult to do, but also bring a little bit of the Arctic with them. I have used twitter in a similar way before, and the potential across the curriculum is huge for this type of communication. Many thanks to Alastair and the Catlin Arctic Survey for providing the opportunity to do this amidst their own schedule. I've included images of the twitter feed which the class followed throughout the lesson below. the tweets are best read from the bottom up to follow the thread of questions (no tweetdeck in school).