Alaska Melting Pot: Final Project

Essential Question: How can digital resources and effective teaching methods be used to integrate Alaska Native ways of knowing and Western scientific methods in order to create greater understanding of, and interest in, geosciences for students?

Introduction

ANSWER Camp stands for Alaska Native Student Wisdom Enrichment Retreat. Alaska Native 7th and 8th grade students from rural locations all over the state are sent to Sitka for two weeks to participate in science and math curriculum taught from an Alaska Native perspective. The Southeast Regional Resource Center (SERRC) has funded ANSWER camp over the past 12 years through a U.S. Department of Education Grant. Now that the funding is no longer available, SERRC hopes to fund future camps through private industry. Although the funding for this summer is not enough to host a camp, we are hoping that we will be able to have camp next summer. I have been a teacher at ANSWER Camp for seven summers and participated in developing the curriculum for the camp during the winter months for four years. For my final project for this course, I would like to see the students host a community action meeting educating the public about global climate change and its impacts on Alaska Native peoples.

Objectives

Students will use digital resources to conduct research and create a presentation on an Alaskan global climate change topic.

Students will present and answer questions about their topic to community members.

Students will create awareness within the community about the impacts of global climate change on Alaska and Alaska Native peoples.

Goals

To create student and community awareness of the impacts of global climate change in Alaska.

To create student and community awareness of the impacts of global climate change on Alaska Native people.

To use digital resources in order to create a greater understanding and assist in student research of global climate change and its impacts on Alaska and its indigenous people.

Engage

Here in Alaska we are experiencing the affects of global climate change first hand. We are finding that Alaska Native people are the very first to notice the changes affecting their communities because of their deep connections to the land. They are noticing changes in our oceans, permafrost, sea ice, terrestrial ice and living organisms. What are these changes exactly, why are they happening, and what can we do about them? You will be calling the members of our community together to explore answers to these questions in a community action meeting sponsored by ANSWER Camp. Your job is to educate the community of the changes occurring in Alaska due to global climate change, how these changes impact Alaska Native people, and encourage action from them to help stop, slow down, or adapt to the changes occurring to our state.

Explore

Research one of the following topics in closer detail:

Permafrost
Sea Ice
Terrestrial Ice
Alaskan living organisms

After the Community Action Meeting, reflect on the following:What digital resource (e.g. Google Earth, YouTube, specific websites, etc.) that you used to gain information about your topic was the most useful? Why or why not?

Alaska Melting Pot

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Final Project

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