New technology brings Arctic to southern students
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Rankin Inlet (Mar 14/01) - An American husband and wife team are bringing an educational approach to Arctic expeditions.
Paul Pregont, of Grand Marais, Minnesota, about 60 miles from Thunder Bay, and his wife, Mille Porsild, originally from Denmark, are dogsledding from Churchill to Grise Fiord.
The couple will make a number of stops in the Kivalliq along the way.
The Nunavut trek is part of an education program which has the two conducting Arctic expeditions as part of an on-line project.
The couple have been integrating their Arctic expeditions into an educational program since 1992.
"We actually started the program under the mentorship of Will Steger, and trained in 1992, '93 and '94 for the beginning of this particular program in 1995," says Pregont.
"We each have a 10-dog team of polar huskies, which are bred after the old-style big freight dogs."
The couple's chief sponsor is Lotus Development, which has provided the first of its kind sophisticated chat room to allow students to interact with each other.
"This hasn't been possible before now. The hosted solution allows them to do this through Connectria and all schools need is to be able to connect to the Internet."
The two will be visiting Arviat, Rankin Inlet, Chesterfield Inlet, Whale Cove and Baker Lake before heading across the barrens to Resolute and Grise Fiord.
Porsild says the educational aspect is the top priority, with the expedition being a learning tool to get students involved.
"We want more southern schools to learn about the North and have Northern kids interact more with their southern counterparts," says Porsild. There are 700 to 1,000 schools participating in the program.
Porsild says the international flavour makes it more interesting for the kids.
She says the new technology meant access had to be capped at 1,000, but, once they see everything is going smoothly, they hope to be able to open it for everybody.
"It's come so far in nine years. In the beginning, when the Internet was still a relatively new thing, if students got an e-mail or a picture from us that was a big deal.
"As the Internet has grown, we've been trying to make the program not only fun, but something that can be used in the classroom as a teaching tool to have kids learn from it.
"We'd like the program to be set to a specific standard like other subjects, but the whole idea is to open doors between schools."
