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Northern Exposure
Northern Exposure
By bringing the Arctic into the classroom, the GoNorth! program is changing the world—one dogsled adventure at a time.
Fresh from their holiday break, the third-graders in John Clay’s classroom at Eden Lake Elementary School are unusually excited about the lesson plan. Today, they’re going online to “adopt” a sled dog.
Each week throughout the winter, the students log in to follow along as their dog journeys to the Arctic with a team of mushers, researchers and educators. On the way, the class explores climate change, marine science, traditional Inuit cultures and a whole lot more.
Clay’s class is one of more than 4,500 around the world using the GoNorth! curriculum, a free online education program designed by the University of Minnesota’s College of Education & Human Development and NOMADS Adventure & Education.
The basic idea of GoNorth! is to link students and teachers in K-12 classrooms to a real-time learning adventure. Every year, the team makes the trip to a different Arctic region. While dogsledding across some of the coldest, most remote landscapes on the planet, the team beams into classrooms via satellite to help teachers deliver lessons that stick.
According to Clay, it’s an idea that helps his students understand the real-world implications of natural and social sciences, geography and other subjects he’s teaching. “For this age, the hook is the dogs,” he says. “They’re very motivated to watch their dog during the course of the expedition, and that inspires them to engage with the curriculum.”
This kind of engagement is the goal of the program, says Aaron Doering, education director for GoNorth! and an associate professor at the U of M. Traveling through the Arctic by dogsled is no small feat—weather is extreme and ever-shifting, the pace requires physical endurance, and there are always polar bears to worry about. Yet each Friday, the expedition halts to hook up satellite equipment, solar panels and laptop computers to deliver the curriculum live from the field.
“Everything we’re doing and communicating on the trail is in sync with what the students are learning in the classrooms,” says Doering. “What we’ve found in our research is that students are significantly motivated to learn in this way.”
Clay sees the evidence of this first-hand. “I have students who have moved up in the grades and they’re still going online to look up the program and to check up on their dog.”
Part of the GoNorth! curriculum, and a key component of the expedition, involves field research for NASA, the National Science Foundation and other partners. Case in point: The team, often with the help of Arctic students, digs snow pits to collect data that can be used to fine-tune NASA satellite imagery.
It’s impossible to study the environment and cultures of the Arctic without coming face-to-face with the realities of climate change and the questions surrounding sustainability. Indeed, in the five years since Doering and his colleagues launched GoNorth!, climate change has become an increasingly central concern to the people of the Arctic, and hence, the program.
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Each year, Aaron Doering and the GoNorth! team traverse an Arctic region via dogsled to study environmental issues, people and cultures. More >>
