Last year at Kigluait Adventures was GREAT!
We had a really exciting time introducing a number of new programs. The special events “Adopt-A-Dog” and “Sled Dogs with Santa” were absolute standouts for us. We are thrilled to be adding a few more this year that we think will be just as great.

Because we had such a good year, it was a huge affirmation to all our hard work to win the CILC Pinnacle Award.

We only have you all to thank for that... THANK YOU!

As a token of our appreciation we are happy to offer a free multi-point (Mushing Alaska or Meet-A-Musher) program to any classroom that participates in a program this September!

As a reminder of what we have going on this September...

Our Special Event is a new program titled “Gold Fever” that has your students doing real-life math solving a claim-jumping dispute in an old-time, Gold Rush era, miner's meeting along the Yukon river. All the while they will be exploring what kinds of social rules need to be established and maintained to keep a community functioning... be it an isolated mining camp in Alaska, or their very own classroom! A perfect way to reinforce the “what for's” of classroom procedures!

Also this month is a special “Meet-A-Musher” multi-point program that will, for the first time, feature our youngest musher Pippin Hum, currently in training for his very first Jr. Iditarod! You won't want to miss it. (Charlie is off to University this year and we wish him the best of luck.)

Of course we'll also be presenting our standard on-demand, point-to-point connections throughout the month. So come join us for all the early season fun!

Thanks again for helping us to make last year our best year ever. We can't wait to see what this new year brings!

See you all soon,

Christina, Rich, Janet, Pippin

With the changes in Ning, Kigluait has begun the process of migrating from Ning to othe Social network capable sites that are available to teachers.

This means this also gives us a chance to model a new tool that teachers can use in their classrooms.

After much research we boiled it down to 2 alternatives to Ning. Now for those that are not aware, Ning is a social network environment that allows for the creation of groups, events, friends with members, blogs, resource sharing etc. In general, an environment where like minded people can join together, share and learn.

So what is out there that can replicate the same services, is free and provides safe features, Buddypress by Wordpress. Gro.ups also provides much of the same similar features, but has the added benefit of being hosted for you. No need for installations or plugins.

So which one to use? Well, we are going to take a year and test out both to see what you as teachers think and prefer.  Kigluait Adventures Social net is now located on gro.ups and Flash Kennels can be found on the Kigluait Buddypress installation.

So which one is best for you as a teacher, well have a look at the features and applications below:

Gro.ups: Membership Required, Groups, Events, Blogs, Forums, Member Profile, Widgets. Friends and rewards. May be blocked by districts. Very easy to use and setup. Just create an account. Applications: Setting up a classroom space for sharing assignments, blogs etc. is a great way to integrate technology into the classroom.

Buddypress: Groups, Events, Blogs, Forums, Member Profile, Widgets.Friends and awards. You must install and host the site on your own server. Applications: Setting up a safe protected space for sharing assignments, blogs, etc.

A close runner up however is Edu2.0.org. This full feature and safe environment is wonderful for housing classroom interactions, but limited at connecting in terms of social media.

All in all the KEA crew has had a pretty restful summer- just what the doctor ordered after a very busy winter and spring! (This past year was our busiest ever! Overwhelming really, which has spurred us to restructure some of the ways we structure our programing- but more on that below.)

A few events of note, however, did bring us out of our restful slumber. The most exciting of which is a new partnership with Whirlidurb that will allow us to offer more multi-point conferencing options in the upcoming year. We are really happy about this because last year we had many more conference requests than we could possibly fill.

We have worked with Shane and Roxanne, the masterminds behind Whirlidurb- for a number of years and couldn't imagine a more exciting, energetic, and knowledgeable pair to be partnering with. And, to kick it all off we helped to present “Novel in an Hour” at this year's ISTE conference. Great fun was had by all as we introduced the power of videoconferencing to a whole new crop of IVC educators!

Speaking of fun, did you catch the IVCplayground at ISTE? We were there in full pirate garb... yo ho ho and shy the bottle of rum! Which we appreciated as yet another great opportunity to help introduce videoconferencing to excited educators. Thanks go to ISTE, and especially all those who took up the task of organizing the playground, for inviting us to participate. Thank you.

And finally, as many of you who have been conferencing with us for the last few years may have noticed, our “junior musher” has been steadily growing up. Yep, Rich's little brother isn't so little anymore! In fact, he's off to college this Fall and all of us wish him the best of luck. We'll miss him. He's always been a huge help both in front of and behind the camera! Those cold and dark winter mornings are going to be just a bit lonely without him. On the other hand, Christina and Rich's son is revving up for his first year of junior racing, so perhaps there will be a new “junior musher” to visit with this year!