FAQ- Virtual Sled Dog Race
- What is the Virtual Sled Dog Race?
- How does it work?
- What role does the individual classroom teacher or homeschool parent play?
- Is this a videoconference?
- Is this a synchronous or live event?
- How much does it cost?
- Will the students enjoy it?
Virtual Sled Dog Race What is it?
The Virtual Sled Dog Race is a web-based simulation event. Classrooms from all around the country participate each year to raise, equip, train, and race their very own virtual sled dogs!
The event is broken up into 5 stages: History, Breeding, Gear and Equipment, Training, and The Race. In the first four stages students gain points in five different categories. Then during the final Race stage they use their points to complete the race. The team with the most points at the end wins the race. This is a really close approximation to the what real-world mushers experience! We spend a whole year, or more, getting ready to race- building up the strength of our team! And then, in just a few short days of actually racing, we use it all up!
wWhat role does the individual classroom teacher play?
There is a lot of flexibility in this. First, each teacher needs to be responsible for printing and having ready the needed materials for each stage. Second the introduction of each stage and associated Direct Instruction can be delivered by the individual teacher or our online videos can be projected to do so. (student's comfortable with web-based learning systems- in this case Moodle and Udutu- could do this independently) Finally, the individual teacher needs to manage computer time for each student/team so they can, at a minimum, enter the results of each days activities into our system This process is grade level appropriate so young student can do this on their own or an individual teacher may choose to do this for them. They will then need to have computer time to check the overall standings to see how that days activities effected their teams total points. This is needed because knowing where your team is at in the five different categories being tracked will alter decisions made in the next stage.
No. There are two real-time webcasts live from Flash Kennels, however. During these there will be a chat room option for asking questions directly to our mushers! Participating classrooms can either join us live for the webcasts or view them at their leisure via a web video (we will closely with individual classrooms who may have trouble doing so due to school filter protocols!) At Kigluait adventures we do offer a series of videoconferences centered on mushing and sled dogs and we do highly recommend scheduling one of these separately if you would like time to delve deeper into the mushing lifestyle! As a side note however, February and March are very busy times for us and we due fill up early. Please schedule these as early as you can if you plan to due so.
Yes. Classrooms from all around the country will be participating in the Virtual Sled Dog Race at the same time. Your class will be competing directly with them. And your students will have the opportunity to share with the other classes via our discussion boards throughout. Each day your student will get to see the result of their days efforts and how it compared with their competitors.
$100 per classroom We consider a classroom to around 30 students.
Completely! They will be driving you nuts to get more time to work on it!
