James Knight, W2JLK, introduced us to Morristown High School (Morristown, NJ) biology teacher and Rutgers University adjunct professor Ms. Janyce Trampler, and we have teamed up to give Morristown HS students a unique educational experience.  Senior students in Ms. Trampler’s Advanced Placement biology class will get a chance glimpse an expedition to a rare and exotic location – Heard Island – in action and will have the unique opportunity, via satellite links, to meet and talk with biology and geology researchers on the island and to watch research activities in progress in near-real time.  The expedition’s real-time website (www.dxa3.org) will show students real-time contacts between the ham team and amateurs throughout the world.  Satellite links will allow students to view biological specimens, see the field data collection work, talk with biologist researchers and ask questions and even suggest names for new species that might be discovered in Heard Island’s unique volcanic biologic environment. We are sure that this opportunity to see both real world biology science and ham radio in action will inspire students and produce new scientists, engineers and radio amateurs. The school website is here.

Dorothy Grant Elementary School (Fontana, CA) teacher Beverly Matheson holds the amateur radio callsign WA6BK. She has been an elementary school teacher in southern California since 1997. In addition to her normal teaching curriculum, she enjoys geography and science and integrates special projects into her classroom. On June 25, 2011 she participated in the W3AO field day outing in Maryland. This inspired her to aquire her amateur radio license and she has now been an amateur radio operator since October 6, 2011 and is looking forward to integrating the use of amateur radio equipment in the classroom. She is also a member of the Discovery Education Network and is working to enrich the lives of students through technology. Her email issocalmath@sbcglobal.net. Currently, she has an amateur radio club at her elementary school. K6DGE was founded in November of 2012 and has grown to nearly 40 after school participants. They have made contacts across the globe including: Falkland Islands, Hungary, Muldovia, Argentina, as well as numerous domestic contacts. A news article about them is here. The school website is here. Also, please visit www.k6dge.com to see the latest updates!

We are also partnering with the James Monroe Middle School(Albuquerque, NM). Our collaborator of 30 years, Mary McGann, a specialist on foramanifera at the U. S. Geological Survey, introduced us toTurtle Haste, a highly honored middle school teacher from Albuquerque, NM. She has won many awards, both at the state and national level, including the NOAA Teacher at Sea Program, a NASA’s Endeavor Fellowship, a U.S. State Department Office of Cultural Affairs – Teachers for Global Classrooms Fellowship, and the 2015 Outstanding New Mexico Science Teacher Award. She has devoted more than 10 years as a teacher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Summer Program, The Endeavor Science Teaching Certificate Project provides live, online training for K-12 educators working to earn a Certificate in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) Education from Teachers College at Columbia University in New York. Haste is known for her connections with researchers around the world, showing her students how the topics they study are being further explored by scientists. They spent this school year exchanging e-mails, packages and the occasional video hook-up with researchers at American and British stations in Antarctica, learning about the frozen continent and its difficult conditions. Student work on the sun shadows project—measuring the length of shadows at different locations around the world at consistent times between the autumnal equinox and winter solstice—has been presented to international audiences at scientific conferences in San Francisco, Norway and at the recent New Mexico Society for Technology in Education conference in Albuquerque. Their school website is: https://drms-aps-nm.schoolloop.com/ and the class website is: http://scienceatdrms.blogspot.com/. Here is a page from her summer class that show some of their interactions with researchers in the past:http://dynamicearthrocks.blogspot.com/. Not only is the page about the kids sending postcards, but on the right in the links there are videos from the season before when they were corresponding with the USCS Healy through a NOAA contact.

These educational connections are important to us: Literally, an “expedition” is a journey undertaken for a purpose. One of our main purposes is to communicate with people worldwide, using the latest in technology to enable real-time communications, and to return with information that will be of value to scientists, both present and future. We believe that these highly motivated students have an opportunity to be innovators, especially in the fields of environmental and Earth science, volcanology, biology, meteorology, marine science, and communications. We hope that the Heard Island experience will give these students an event that will enhance their lives, and we look forward to this partnership. We salute the teachers for their effort and innovative spirit.