When are you going to Antarctica?

13th of November, 13th to the 21st of November and remember that you can come, you can always say that you’re coming to Antarctica as well, it is virtual, but those 15 different IT strategies that we use, are all designed to actually give you as much of an Antarctic experience as you can. So yes we’re all off on the 13th of November.

If you go to the LEARNZ website we’ve got an excellent system that you can just follow your nose. The thing that you need is your school number, your Ministry of Education number, that becomes your user name for the whole school. The total cost for a school in New Zealand, for the year to be in the LEARNZ programme is $45 at the moment. That covers the teacher manual that you will get, and on the screen at the moment, from the home page we are just navigating through how you register your school, and then enrol your class. Now that will give you the newsletters, the audio conference and video conference times. Teachers are telling us when they want them at the moment, and we are juggling those so that we are available to do as many schools as possible, so that students can actually talk live to Scott Base and from the field as well. The plan is with a satellite phone, that you can ask you questions to the geologists and the drillers while we’re standing on the sea ice or the ice shelf, and you’ll hear the squeak of the snow. That’s what we’re after, that is what we want your learning of Antarctica to include. The other thing I mentioned was the videos, but one other important thing is the diary. The diary I’ll do that every evening, and that will be available for you as you arrive at school, and on it will be 10 images, and we will upload that from Scott Base, and it will have the geography, it will have the science, it will have the technology, it will have all the aspects that are in the New Zealand curricula, but I’ll tell it with a perspective of what I have been doing that day. I'll give you practical examples of some of the questions that you have asked, and also things that you have never thought of. Things that are really fascinating and interesting, and part of that story about how is it that you can actually get there. Remember I’ve had to pass…..just for these 9 days I’ve had an extensive medical, I’ve had two days of assessment and first aid, and really put through the hoops just to get your feet into Antarctica and everybody from every nation has to have that. It’s just so hard to get anybody out of there. So that’s how you get to go to Antarctica by living it. My job is to tell it for you, so yeah I’m hoping you will join us.