Inaugurated last year, Antarctica Day is celebrated on 1 December (in commemoration of the signing of the Antarctica Treaty on 1 December, 1959) as a day to learn about Antarctic though art, science, government, and history with audiovisual material, maps and activities in their classroom and outdoors connecting their school space with International Spaces around the world.
APECS celebrated Antarctica Day 2011 by hosting a list of events and a map showing Virtual Balloons launched by people celebrating Antarctica Day all over the world. We had 70 balloons launched! Another APECS event was a special Antarctica Day Webinar which featured a presentation by the Executive Directors of both SCAR (Mike Sparrow) and IASC (Volker Rachold) as well as our own Director Jenny Baeseman about "Polar Science in a Global Context," as well as Allen Pope on “Antarctica Day and where it came from,” Tosca Ballerini on “Southern Ocean Marine food webs: engaging early carrier scientists in an international collaborative modeling community” and Daniela Liggett on “Adding 'value' to Antarctic social science research.” More than 60 people attended the session online, and shortly a full recording will be available on the APECS Vimeo site.
Another great resource record on Antarctica Day was a live Polar Connect call with teacher Michelle Brown as well as SCAR President Chuck Kennicutt, organized by PolarTREC. More than 40 teachers and 500 students were on the call, and the full event is archived and available on the PolarTREC website.
We hope you continued to celebrate Antarctica and the international collaboration and friendships that science can bring for the rest of the month and throughout the entire year. If you want to get involved with organizing Antarctica Day 2012 or host your own Antarctica Day, please get in contact with Julie Berkman, the Director of APECS partner Our Spaces.
