You can follow their progress on their expedition website. Digital Explorer is working with the teams to see how we can develop their ability to communicate their experiences and become role models for the wider school community.

The expeditions will be using Digital Explorer’s [de] blogs platform.

Ed’s book is available on Amazon and he is currently undertaking a national speaking tour.

Ed was kind enough to be part of the launch for the Digital Explorer Academy with a live chat from the Amazon to students at the London Zoo rainforest exhibit.

Within this ongoing saga, I have two roles: one as Director of Digital Explorer and the second as a member of Council of the Royal Geographical Society. My name has been used to support various stances and this article seeks to put the record straight.

As Director of Digital Explorer, I have a clear and unwavering vision of
what exploration and expeditions can be. This vision has as its basis my experiences as a geography and citizenship teacher in secondary schools in the UK. The problem that I faced and now seek to address is how to engage young people in global issues such as climate change, habitat conservation and cultural understanding.

The model that we have developed at Digital Explorer is focused just as much on educational output as field research. Teams of young people or scientists work in the field to investigate an issue and then share this with schools around the world using a combination of multi-media and satellite technologies via an interactive website. This model brings the frontiers of knowledge direct to the classroom. Recent examples of our work include taking a team of students to Pakistan to counter negative media stereotypes (first episode to be broadcast on Monday 8 November) and working with a team in Antarctica, powering an education base using renewable energy.

This appreciation of schools and young people as an important audience for expeditions is not exclusive to Digital Explorer, and our evolution over the past few years has coincided with an increasing number of expeditions creating educational resources and interacting live from the field with pupils.

With this background and context in mind, I can happily state the following beliefs:

1. Expeditions should work to inspire the next generation to be truly global citizens by enhancing their understanding of the world
2. Expeditions should aspire to a professional level of communications (through film, photography and writing, both on and offline)
3. An expedition’s objectives should relate to wider societal concerns
4. The world of exploration is big enough to encompass a range of different types and styles of expedition (taking into account the above points)
5. An expedition that is inspiring and exciting is more likely to engage an educational and generalist audience

These are my personal views and have their practical expression through my work with Digital Explorer and in aiding other expeditions to utilize technologies such as the internet, Google Earth, video, photography and social media to share their experiences and finding, in particular with a youth and educational audience.

In my role as a recently elected Ordinary Councillor for Education of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), my first responsibility is to act in the best interests of the Society. The Society has a great history and more importantly has a strong current position sitting at the crossroads of robust research, world-respected expertise in expeditions and a central position in formal geography education. Through combining these strengths, the Society has a unique opportunity to disseminate new knowledge about the world to a school and generalist audience. This is something to be celebrated.

As Ordinary Councillor for Education, I have a particular interest in two excerpts from the Review:

We plan to deliver five new Research Partnership Initiatives over the next ten years:

Supporting outreach and education activities as a partner in large projects organised by other groups, bringing the Society’s considerable expertise in involving wider communities in research and disseminating results to schools, the general public and policy makers.

and

To ensure that we make more of the Society’s commitment to research and discovery through fieldwork, we propose the following:

Provide added value, for example, developing educational resources to share the findings of selected Society-supported projects with teachers and pupils and the public.

I welcome the recent announcement of the ‘From the Field’ Awards in collaboration with The Goldsmiths’ Company, enabling geography teachers to work alongside research expeditions to develop educational resources for the classroom, and look forward to giving what expertise I have in this area to aid the Society in delivering on the Review.

In terms of the shape and focus of Society supported expeditions, I imagine that there will be interesting debates, passionate but not heated, in the months to come. My bias will be towards supporting those expeditions that inspire and educate, but there will be others with different backgrounds and different views.

I believe in a ‘both/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’ world, and I would ask those who seek to portray me as belonging to one camp or another to read this article, respect my views and support this vision.

I saw this story develop this morning via twitter. Andy Pag is 13,500km into the inspiring Biotruck Expedition attempting to travel around the world emitting less than 2 tonnes of CO2, and discovering how other people are cutting their footprint. I enjoy seeing his updates on twitter, then this morning his arrest in the Indian city of Ajmer unravelled live on the internet.

Apparently the anti-terrorist police were tracking the satellite phone signal as Andy travelled from Pakistan to India and he was eventually picked up early this morning. This was despite the obvious profile he has been enjoying in India with a photo of him and the truck on the front page of The Times of India yesterday.

It’s a rather cautionary tale and calls into question the insouciance with which many expeditions use satellite communications. We hope Andy will come through this hiccup with another story to tell and more publicity for his expedition, but permissions for carrying this kind of equipment might have to make it into your next expedition plans.

This fourth entry in Digital Explorer’s Google Earth gallery is where it all started with a study of urban land use in Marrakech with pupils from Eastbury Comprehensive in 2006 on the Toubkal ’06 expedition.

	The use of Google Earth and remote blogging received an Innovative Geography Teaching Grant from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).
	This work is also held up as a national case study by BECTA’s Next Generation Learning project.

Download the Google Earth tour – Marrakech Land Use

You will need Google Earth to view the tour. If you don’t have Google Earth, you can download it for free:

Contact Digital Explorer, if you would like to make a Google Earth tour for your expedition or fieldwork.

The third entry in Digital Explorer’s Google Earth gallery features educational videos made during the E-Base Goes Live Expedition. More educational resources about Antarctica can be found at 2041′s Education Site.

Download the Google Earth tour – Antarctic Education Videos

You will need Google Earth to view the tour. If you don’t have Google Earth, you can download it for free:

Contact Digital Explorer, if you would like to make a Google Earth tour for your expedition or fieldwork.

This is the second entry in a series of expedition based Google Earth tours from Digital Explorer. We will be publishing a new tour everyday for the next couple of weeks. The E-Base video story Google Earth tour allows you to follow the E-Base Goes Live Expedition day-by-day with geo-located videos, as the team work to put up wind turbines in Antarctica.

Download the Google Earth tour – E-Base Video Story

You will need Google Earth to view the tour. If you don’t have Google Earth, you can download it for free:

Contact Digital Explorer, if you would like to make a Google Earth tour for your expedition or fieldwork.

This is the first tour in the Google Earth Expedition Gallery from Digital Explorer. Follow the team from Digital Explorer, npower and 2041, as they find about life in Antarctica during their time on King George Island on the E-Base Goes Live Expedition in March 2009.

Download the Google Earth tour – Living in Antarctica

You will need Google Earth to view the tour. If you don’t have Google Earth, you can download it for free:

Contact Digital Explorer, if you would like to make a Google Earth tour for your expedition or fieldwork.

Mine are…

What is your top tip for those planning an expedition?

Integrate your communications and education plans from the outset. You have the ability to inspire a huge range of people to make a difference.

What item do you always take with you on an expedition?

Satellite communications kit. It’s a real joy to be able to share an expedition in real-time with an audience back home.

Get the October issue or come along to Explore to find out more.

Also see the January article on Digital Explorer.

So how do these two approaches fit with the exploration philosophy held by Digital Explorer. We believe that exploration, expeditions, field projects – call it what you will – should have four main steps.

Explore and go out into the world to seek new information and knowledge that is critical to advance our understanding of the world and how best humankind can enjoy and conserve the planet and its diverse peoples, species and environments.

Discover through the proper application of research methods as well as incorporating the wealth of indigenous knowledge into our understanding. Exploration is not just about travel, but a journey or field-based project with real rigour.

Share your findings with others and more widely than a narrowly read tome, gathering dust somewhere. There are so many engaging and inspiring ways of doing this. A minimum target for any expedition should be to reach 1,000 people who you didn’t know before you left.

Engage others to act. Knowledge is all very well and good, but no amount of knowledge and research alone will encourage the wider public to change behaviours and attitudes, needed for sustainable future. Without engagement we will all be better informed, and yet still unmoved.

There are expeditions that do fulfil these criteria, operating outside the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society. Expeditions that fulfil not just a need for good field science, but also seek to stir emotions and inspire change. The Society is the only British institution in a position to coordinate truly inspiring scientific journeys and projects, that have at their core a desire to find out more about our planet, and to share these discoveries through powerful stories that speak to people on a emotional level.

If facts and figures could save the world, there wouldn’t be a need to have this conversation.