The two day workshop, organized by the European Polar Board and the European Science Foundation, discussed increasing the awareness of IPY internationally and nationally, and also the European IPY EOC activities amongst EOC interested people with the purpose to create EOC networks across Europe. The intention was to have ready made plans and time tables for collaboration between European countries within joint EOC activities by the end of the workshop.
During the educational breakout session, three main priorities were highlighted. The first was to use teachers as a good way to spread the word about IPY to schools. The second was to create partnership field activities, such as summer schools, student expeditions and similar projects to give young researchers more experience in arctic regions. Finally, online forums and classroom toolkits could be created in order spread more information between school children, teachers and researchers.
Norway has taken the preliminary lead with this educational initiative. It will be presented to the Norway IPY subcommittee, along with at Arctic Science Summit Week taking place 22-29 March in Germany.
University of the Arctic (UArctic) Field School , Chair Eystein Markusson represented UArctic at the workshop. On behalf of UArctic, Markusson took on a shared preliminary initiative with Franz Tessensohn, from the German IPY Committee, to further the second priority of creating partnership field activities. Some examples include summer schools, student expeditions and similar projects.
More Information:
UArctic Field School
IPY Official Website