Polar Outreach Catalogue

To celebrate the IPY launch in classrooms, we developed a simple flyer describing an ice investigation. Our IPY network of volunteer educators and national contacts translated the flyer into 22 languages and then disseminated it globally. We used a free on-line geobrowser tool (Tagzania) so that students who completed the activity could "launch a virtual balloon" showing their location and comments. Encouraged by this response, we developed a quarterly series of Polar Day events that focussed on specific interdisciplinary aspects of polar research, stimulated direct engagement by a broad international spectrum of audiences and researchers, and included a means for feedback and programme development.