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!

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

Well, we are well and fully into the darkness of winter now!  Most of our training is now done either part way in the dark or completely!

Headlights have become our best friend and I am starting to think we should buy some stock in Duracell so we can at least earn some of our money back!

But really, training is going EXTREMELY well.  In fact this team of dogs- all of which, except Goldeen and Creamer, are under two years old- is the best team I have ever trained!

I don't know if it is the genetics of these dogs or the new training system but they are a VERY fun team to run behind!

We have pretty consistently been sticking to the plan of 2 long slow runs with 3 short fast runs.  We have played around a bit with the resting schedule of this plan in Nov. running more than resting.  But I have been watching them close for any kind of physical or mental slumps... haven't really had any, just a brief period when all the females were in season.

Last night we put it all together in a 45 mile race-pace run.  They totally RIPPED IT UP- powerfull the whole way and maintained a nice strong 10-11mph pace.  Even though we did a run where we had to do two laps of a 22.5 mile out and back loop.  And dogs COMPLETELY hate that kind of thing.  So I am sure on a "funner" trail they would have been even quicker and stronger.

Which leads me to the mental conditioning of the dogs.  This is one side of training a set of yearling sleddogs that I feel I need to be most careful.  Physically, I feel these dogs are VERY tough, but mentally, they are fragile teenagers so I am being VERY carefull to keep everything upbeat and fun!

So far it's working and I am having more fun running dogs this year than I have in a VERY long time!

I can't wait to race them and see how they compare to other teams...only problem is that our low snow levels this year keep forcing races to cancel!  One so far, and it looks like another next weekend!  Poop!

Eventually we'll get in a race though, so we will keep training hard so we are ready!