Alaskan Students and Teachers Treated to Demonstration of New Kiosk Archive

 
Published: 15 May 2005

A biology class at Barrow High School follows along as their teacher checks out the North Slope of Alaska DVD archive.

As an extension of the North Slope of Alaska (NSA) Climate Change: Science and Traditional Knowledge kiosk developed by the ARM Climate Research Facility Education and Outreach staff, a DVD archive of related interviews is now available to students, teachers, and the community of Barrow, Alaska. The interactive kiosk—in place at the Iñupiat Heritage Center (IHC) in Barrow since October 2003—is a tool to help the public learn about climate change from both scientific and indigenous perspectives. Footage from the filming process for the kiosk was integrated into an archive of 305 video clips from 28 interviewees. Designed to run on a personal computer, users can search the archive for video clips by an interviewee’s name or a topic of interest.

In early May, the NSA site manager and ARM Climate Research Facility Education and Outreach staff presented the archive to the IHC, providing information about ARM’s role at the NSA, why the kiosk was created, and a short demonstration of the archive. The presentations took place while students from both Anchorage and Barrow visited the IHC as part of an exchange program offered through Barrow High School. This presented ARM with a unique opportunity to reach Anchorage students and teachers, an audience not specifically targeted by outreach efforts at the NSA. Following the formal presentation, students and teachers at both the IHC and Barrow High School received information packets containing additional climate education materials and a copy of the DVD archive.

The IHC was a collaborator on the kiosk project by facilitating discussions between the ARM Climate Research Facility Education and Outreach and community elders, leaders, educators, and students. Because not all the interviews taken during the filming process could be included in the kiosk, the Climate Change: Science and Traditional Knowledge Archive was developed to make the valuable information easily accessible to teachers, students, and the public. The archive is an excellent resource for teaching basic climate concepts as well as history, cultural studies, and social studies.