Getting there
A long, exhausting day of traveling from Boston to Fairbanks. The highlight was meeting several other PolarTREC participants and seeing Mt. McKinley from the plane.
View of Mt. McKinley from the plane
Running in 16 below
John and I began the day with a nice run for an hour through Fairbanks at 16 below! A great run except for the fact that the icicles on my eyelashes kept interfering with my vision…
Taking a quick break from running to take a photo and enjoy the beautiful scenery along the river.
Icebreakers
I’ll be honest – I wasn’t looking forward to sitting in a conference room all day after traveling for 18 hours yesterday. But I was pleasantly surprised at how engaged I felt all day and how quickly the time passed.
The highlight of the day was clearly meeting the rest of the PolarTREC participants and staff. What an interesting group! The group represents an incredibly dynamic group of educators with such a variety of backgrounds and experiences. By nature I am a more reserved person, so I was not looking forward to the icebreaker activities. But again I was surprised that I thoroughly enjoyed the casual way we got to know each other.
Overview
The PolarTREC staff gave an excellent overview of what was expected of us and the resources available, as well as putting this into the larger context of Arcus, NSF, etc. (as a side not I also enjoyed seeing Janet’s Prezi presentation, which is something I’ve been interested in using myself!).
The PolarTREC group in orientation
I found the three alumni presentations to be engaging, entertaining, and informative. There were several lessons to be drawn from them, but the basic message seemed to be “you’ll get out of the experience what you put in”. This is a valuable lesson. I hope to be able to follow the advice of the alumni and tackle my PolarTREC experience with the same enthusiasm and intitiative that they did.
The overview of technology resources was not so valuable for me personally – I am very comfortable with the tools we’ll be using – but I am sure for others it was important. (Zed’s video was a wonderfully entertaining way to introduce us to the technology!)
Getting familiar with the technology tools
Dinner
An informative and interesting day was capped off by a delicious dinner where we got further opportunities to get to know one another. I head off to bed looking forward to the learning ahead this week.
Map of Alaska