Last school year, 2009/2010, we experienced our busiest year of programing ever! And, while we are very excited about that, as many of you know, we are just a simple, family run business. There is just three of running the entire operation. We like it that way. It fits the vision by which we started KEA in the first place: to share our combined interests in sled dogs, the outdoors, and education with students around the country to motivate learning.

But we were very concerned that the volume of program request we were receiving was eventually going to effect the quality of our programing. Also, we were simply running out of time in the day to actually run the programs!

So we have done some restructuring to help us serve you better and maintain our own sanity and sustainability.

We have separated our programing into three categories:

1. On-Demand. This is essentially the same type of programing we have always done. You select the program you want, the date you want, and the time you want. Then we work closely with you to meet your needs and you meet with us one on one for the program. We have had to raise our prices a bit on these but they are still on the low end of most private content provides and for cheaper than any other provider who actually takes you outside into the environment that the program content is discussing! (For classrooms that these price increases may create a hardship for, please look into our Monthly Multi-Points.)

2. Monthly Multi-Points. Thanks to our new partnership with Whirlidurb we are now able to offer a monthly multi-point conference of our most popular programs- Mushing Alaska and Meet a Musher. These conferences run on the first Thursday of each month at set times and are offered at a lower cost than the On-Demand programs. We will never meet with more than 3 classes at a time and they have been restructured to incorporate classroom to classroom interactivity, as well as interactivity with us and the sled dogs.

3. Special Events. Like the tittle suggests these are special events that cover unique topics that we only offer once a year. They occur on the third Thursday of each month and are run on the same price and time structure as our Monthly Multi-Points.

We hope this restructuring meets the many needs of all our participants and, as always, welcome and need your feedback to continue to improve our programming!

Coming soon! Be Green Micro-Grant Program

Okay, at KEA we have always been about respecting our environment- regardless of what that environment is- urban/rural, natural and pristine or man made. So as the summer unfolded and the BP oil well kept spilling our frustration and anger kept growing- like I am sure many of yours did.

Our frustration was/is because it seemed like there was nothing we could do, a sense of helplessness. Probably a lot of you experienced the same emotions but really there is a lot that we can do. Maybe not to actually stop the oil spilling or physically clean up the beaches but we can change how we approach our daily lives and make small commitments to actively create local environments that are respectful to all that share it- human, animal, and plant.

Now KEA is a small family business, and like a lot of people these days we are just barely scraping by, so we don't have the huge economic power to force or promote societal behaviors the way large corporations, with their huge marketing and PR budgets, do. No, instead, what we do have is a desire to do something- anything- and some minor skill in communicating and connecting people through digital media.

So, over the next few weeks we will be setting up a micro-grant program where people can send in proposals for small- community, school, classroom, family, individual- scaled project ideas that improve the living environments for all in the their area. Each proposal entry will have a small fee. We'll create a scoring rubric to judge the project proposals and then using that scoring guide we will all vote on which projects should be funded. Funding will come from the proposal entry fees so the amount will vary depending on how many projects are submitted. A true grassroots effort!

We are still working out the details. Please contact us with input!! At the moment we are thinking that we will have monthly (or more regular) themes and project categories. Perhaps structured so that only after “X” number of proposals are submitted will we vote, etc... Again, please contact us with your ideas on how to do this!

We are also thinking that we will create a fairly specific proposal format. All proposals will be publicly viewable so that even ideas that aren't funded will be up on the web for others to see and use if they want. In that way, every idea can be taken up and implemented by any who want. The types of projects we will promote are the kind that can be done by individuals, small groups, a class, a school, etc... even without outside funding. Our grants will just be a little bonus to get things going- a kick in the butt to get us motivated!

Our hope is that as we travel around on our bikes this August we can collect a series of examples to use as idea starters. But again, we are still working out the details and want any and all input we can get!

The “A” in KEA stands for Adventures! For the most part, that refers to adventures in learning, but at KEA we have always felt life is learning. And this summer we're stretching our wings a bit. We are traveling away from our comfort zone (i.e. a small cabin in the woods) and venturing into the big city!

Yep, we're coming out of the backwoods of Alaska to take a grand tour down the Atlantic coast from New York city to Washington DC by bicycle. Yikes!

To say this is WAY out of our comfort zone is just a slight (wink, wink, snicker) understatement! But life is learning and experiencing new things! So away we go.

The really fun part is going to be actually seeing many of the places (or general regions, at least) that we conference with throughout the year. Our plan is to start out in New York city then head down through New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia before looping back up to DC.

We'll be posting trip updates and thoughts, along with route information, as we go. We are completely excited about this opportunity to explore different lifestyles first hand and would love to visit any interested schools along the way! You can follow our progress on the Teaching Wow blog and KEA Facebook page, as well as both Christina and Rich's Twitter feeds. Feel free to contact us if your school is along the way and would like to visit.