Virtual Sled Dog Race: The Pipeline 100!

It's that time of year again! Virtual Racing!

Sled dogs, that is!

Every spring, right around Iditarod time, we run our Virtual Sled Dog race: The Pipeline 1000. It's a bit of a departure from our normal videoconference programing but simply a ton of fun!

What it is, is an online, curriculum-based, role playing game where students become the mushers responsible for the raising, equipping, training, and finally racing of their very own dog team!

Along the way they delve into the reading, writing, history, and math skills directly relevant to the care and performance of their dog team. Teams from classrooms around the country compete with each other each year, checking their results daily. It's self motivated learning at it's very best. And the more they learn the better their team runs!

For the teacher:
*Complete, standards-based curriculum with assessments
*Step-by-step video tutorials on using the curriculum
*Flexible timeline allowing for individual classroom pacing of curriculum
*Secure online classroom for teacher collaboration and dialog
*Modification guidelines for grade level adaptations

For students:
*Secure online-classroom
*Tons of online video and photographic resources
*Musher Blog
*Direct web-based communication with an Iditarod and Jr. Iditarod musher
*Live web-streamed events from a working Alaskan racing kennel
*Real-time updates of Virtual Race standings
*Prizes for the top ten finishing teams

The race starts February 22^nd and ends March 5^th so sign up soon... spots fill quickly! $100/classroom or $20/homeschool family Learn More/Register

What's Happening!

This year the end of January marks the end of the race season for the Flash Kennels sled dogs but just the begging of Iditarod madness! And since we aren't racing in it this year, we have a number of things going on to help students get the most out of this exciting event!

The first is our February Special Event, Race Ready! You can read more about it below, but I can only say that we are totally pumped to be doing this program.

In much the way baseball is a game of statistics, distance sled dog racing a sport mathematics!

Speed, Distance, Time! And how to balance them to figure out when to run with how long to rest are the equations mushers go over endlessly as they work their way to Nome.

In Race Ready we'll introduce your students to all the factors that have to be considered in that equation.  And then show them how to use online “race update” data to understand how their favorite musher is doing out on the trail!

Then there's the Virtual Sled Dog Race: The Pipeline 1000! This isn't a videoconference but instead a two week online event! About the same amount of time the real mushers spend out on the Iditarod trail. This is the event that started it all for us here at KEA and this year it is new and improved. It promises to be the best running ever. Don't let your students miss out!!

So, as you can see, while the race season is winding down for the dogs of Flash Kennels, things are just heating up for the rest of us at KEA! We hope you'll join us for all the action!

Race Ready!

Iditarod is just around the corner! And, as we all know, there are a million and one ways to use the excitement of the race to motivate learning!

Join KEA for our February Specail Event: Race Ready! And we'll show you the BEST way!

Race Ready is a great program that approaches the Iditarod as a big, huge, giant math problem that your students will love to solve!

Racing sled dogs is all about figuring out how far you can run, how long it will take you to run it, and how much rest the dogs need until they can do it again!

So, in other words, it's nothing but one long RATE equation! But one that's just slightly more interesting than figuring out when one train leaving Chicago is going to meet up with another leaving form California!

In Race Ready we'll start out by going for a dog run- just to see why musher's love to run. Then we'll move into the strategies distances racers use win. You guessed it... rate equations! And finally, we'll wrap it all up by examining how to interpret the race updates data that all races post on the web! At the end of the program your students will not only have learned how to use rate equations in a real life setting but they'll be dying for Iditarod to start so they can do it some more!

To find out more about the program, learn how it's adapted throughout grade levels, or register, visit our website here.