TEXT TRANSCRIPT
Narrator:
Antarctica is the fifth largest and the southernmost continent. Its position at the South Pole, together with its elevation and ice and snow cover, generates the coldest climate on earth. So how did Susan Cowles and her class of adult learners at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon, take a field trip to such a cold and distant place? Well, by participating in an electronic field trip, which then led them to many other activities, including several that helped their reading, writing, and their math skills.
Cowles:
The Live from Antarctica II Electronic Field Trip was a marvelous project that centered on... it was also once again, a National Science Foundation/NASA/PBS project. It centered on Palmer Station, Antarctica, which is one of the three United States year-round Antarctic stations. It's south of South America, south of Chile and Argentina, and there were three live satellite transmissions that we were able to participate in from Palmer Station. One of them showed a lot about the food chain in the ocean, a lot of science having to do with krill and other organisms in the ocean. It talked, also, about how scientists get to Palmer Station, the different kinds of survival training that they have to do to make sure they can survive if they get to a place where they really shouldn't be. And, then the second program, I think, talked a lot about penguins and penguin rookeries. We actually were, the people talking were perhaps one foot away from a lot of penguins, and in fact, they showed us-- they put radio transmitters on penguins. And then the third live transmission had more to do with ozone and issues of problems with the ozone hole over Antarctica and showed scientists in the field working on some plants. So, we were able to hear questions being answered by experts in the field. We were able to watch them actually go about their scientific investigations and also see how the scientists lived in [a] remote station in a very small site. There were activities, scientific activities and experiments that we could do in the classroom, if we wanted to, that went along with all the different objectives that were a part of this scientific expedition that was actually ongoing at the moment in Palmer Station. What we chose to do, primarily, was to use our writing skills to send and receive electronic mail from a scientist who was from the National Science Foundation and was spending a month down in Palmer Station, Antarctica.
The live transmissions are such an exciting part of electronic field trips. However, a lot of classrooms don't get live transmission, and so the programs are taped and can be used later in classrooms. A lot of places do that. Many of these programs are actually transmitted through the NASA feed, and if that NASA channel is available on cable in a particular area, then that's one way that instructors can gain access to that information or to that program. Also, in some states, or in some cities, PBS does actually show the live transmission of an electronic field trip, or does show a rebroadcast at a later time.
One of the activities that the students did as part of the Antarctica project was that they compared the South Pole with the North Pole on a variety of different topics and subjects:
the composition of the area, what flora and fauna can be found there, temperature ranges, and so on and so forth. And they used various sites on the Internet about the Arctic and the Antarctic in order to find that information. They also used hard print: encyclopedias and dictionaries.
Another activity that they found really very interesting was that they used some information about survival in Antarctica actually from the Antarctic resource people, and there is a lot of information that's available on that. They were given the guideline of how you could be in Antarctica and survive, and then in small groups, they were given a certain survival scenario:
Something's happened and you've take that Zodiac, that little inflatable boat, and you're off on a little island and the weather changes. What are you going to do? And so, as a group, they tried to do some problem solving, answer the question and come up with a survival strategy, which I had them discuss and then report back to people in oral communication. But they also did that in writing. And that could be done as part of a portfolio assessment as well.
Doctor Paula Penhale was the scientist for the National Science Foundation, who was corresponding with the students in this particular program, and she first sent a message of welcome to them, to their electronic accounts, and to me. The message also later appeared actually, in her journal on the internet base site, and she described what she was doing down in Antarctica. And she described basically the living conditions and the situation. The students then sent her questions about what they really wanted to know. One of the burning questions actually was:
How do fourteen women share one toilet, one shower stall and one sink when they're down there for a long period of time? So we learned a lot about that. Students asked questions that were, say, about her, about a scientist's education and training, because the students in this program are very interested in knowing how people get a variety of different sorts of jobs. They ask about the support staff there, how the support staff get their jobs down there. Say you wanted to be a cook in Antarctica at a station, what would you do? Some of the students asked specific questions about scientific research. Just a whole variety of things, and then they had their individual questions answered.
Student 1:
In that station, so I asked them about the bathroom, because there's only one bathroom, and they have to take two-minute showers. They just limit their time for the showers. Yeah, I thought it was neat to be able to send it clear over there and get a response.
Student 2:
We took and wrote her and found out about Antarctica and about the living there, camping, all kinds of stuff they did there, how they cooked. They only got a certain amount of food every six months; it came in on the ship.
This one is about the education part in the college. And here's Palmer Station right here and then go down. She's tells you, "This is Polly Penhale... responsible for Palmer Station, a small marine biologists' laboratory."
Cowles:
It's really hard to pick one benefit of a Live from Antarctica project. There were so many but I think the thing that really did it for all of us was that it just dissolved the classroom walls. And we realized that with the changes in technology, what we were really seeing and experiencing in real time or through the Internet, which was something absolutely amazing. We learned a lot, not only about Antarctica, but we really learned a lot about modern technology. One thing, I think, adult learners-- and I certainly put myself right there-- I think we were able to appreciate the unbelievable nature of this live transmission, much more than say, younger kids, school age, who maybe take for granted a lot of the technology that people of my age remember. We remember when it wasn't there. And the programs actually showed us, too, in a nice little schematic of how the transmissions from the ship to the shore, to one particular satellite back to another to another, and how then it was finally fed to us at our particular site. And that was just an absolute marvel.
Cowles:
Students in adult literacy programs have often not been successful in a traditional classroom or in a learning situation where they have worked in isolation or where they have been given a workbook to work out of. Often adults are in programs for a whole variety of reasons, of course, based on their individual situation. But it often has an incompatibility with working in isolation or working just in one mode--the workbook, something like that. And so this kind of a program is really taking a new and a different approach in having adult learners work together and being able to use technology to work in context. I think having technology really frees and allows the instructor to do a lot of new and exciting things that are available on the Internet. And a lot of adult literacy workers are part time. They don't have much time for preparation. They may be holding down other jobs as well. And the beauty of using things such as the electronic-based field trip is a lot of information and suggested activities are really right there for the instructor to use. It doesn't take a whole lot of preparation time, and yet, they're activities that are something that adults really do enjoy using. The activities are often geared towards a middle school level, which is a skill level often for adults in literacy programs. But the activities are very appropriate to adult learners.
Student 3:
I've been in this GED program for about a month, and I find that having access to the computers is wonderful because I find that some of the assignments that we've done, the atlases and some of the information that we get out of the books isn't really up to date, and even some of the CD-ROMs seem a little bit outdated. But the Internet, the stuff on the computers has been fabulous, has been really helpful to me for looking up information. And it seems that there's a lot more information for me, and it's easier to find over the Internet or the computer rather than some of the older texts that are in the classroom. And I think it's great, and I'm glad I have the opportunity.
Cowles:
Another thing that is a real comfort to me as an adult literacy instructor is that I don't really have to be an expert on a lot of the things that we're doing here. I'm learning right along with the students in the classroom, and the materials that are available are so clear and so easily understood that it is something that as an instructor, I can come in and use without a whole lot of academic preparation or background on my part. I certainly have increased my level of scientific and technological literacy through a lot of these projects.
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