Denali Distance Learning Opportunities

Although I've been to Alaska twice, I've yet to visit Denali National Park. I hope that some day soon I can visit it with my daughters. In the meantime there are some cool resources for learning about Denali on the National Parks Service's website. One of those resources is a free distance learning program offered to schools in the United States. 

The National Parks Service offers the Denali Distance Learning Program from November 1st through March 31st. Through this program you can request a live, virtual presentation by Denali staff for your students. There are six programs/ presentations available for elementary school classrooms and one available for high school classrooms. 

The elementary school programs are:

• At Home in Denali's Biome
• Denali's Dinosaurs
• What Would You Do: Winter Wildlife
• Lessons from the Land
• The Science of Sled Dogs
• Ask an Alaskan - Living and Working in Denali

The program for high school classrooms is called Why Wilderness?

You can learn more about all of Denali's Distance Learning programs right here and request a presentation on that same page. 

According to this recent Instagram post on the Denali National Park account, there is still some availability for presentations this year, but space is filling up fast. 

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Is Denali Shrinking? - A Mountain Math Lesson

Thanks to The Adventure Blog over the weekend I learned that Denali - AKA Mt. McKinley - has been re-measured. The mountain is now listed 83 feet shorter than the previously accepted height measurement. Visit The Adventure Blog for the full accounting of the change.  Reading the article reminded me of another mountain measurement lesson that I shared last year. That lesson is included below.

Last night I started to read Mount Everest, The Reconnaissance 1921 which I downloaded for free from Google Books. In the introduction there is a three page explanation of the methods used to measure the height of Mount Everest. An explanation of the differences in measurements is also provided in the introduction. Part of that explanation includes differences in snow fall, cyclical deviations of gravity, and differences atmospheric refraction when observations were made. I'm not a mathematics teacher and will never pretend to be one, but reading that introduction did get me thinking about a possible mathematics lesson.

Applications for Education

Turn to pages 10 through 13 of Mount Everest, The Reconnaissance 1921 and read about the difficulties of accurately measuring Mount Everest in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. It's interesting to note that most accepted measurements were more than 100 feet higher than today's accepted measurement. Tell your students that Mount Everest has shrunk over the last 100 years and ask them to solve the mystery of the shrinking mountain. 

On a mildly related note and on a promotion of a Mainer note, Snow in the Kingdom: My Storm Years on Everest by Ed Webster is one of the best books ever written about Mount Everest. If you enjoy good adventure stories and or stories about overcoming personal struggles, I think you will enjoy Webster's book. For my money, and I own two copies of it, it is far better than Krakauer's Into Thin Air.