Thanks to an interactive whiteboard and a Tandberg videoconferencing  unit  in their classroom, Primary Six children at St Patrick’s PS Loughguile were able to come face to face with one of their heroes and star of the surprise hit reality television series ‘Ice Truck Drivers’. And the County Antrim children in turn became minor celebrities in the Canadian frontier town of Yellowknife when their video link with ice truck driver Alex Debogorski made the CBC evening news.

Ice road trucking is one of the world’s most dangerous jobs but most people had never even heard of it until ‘Ice Truck Drivers’, a documentary charting the adventures of six ice truck drivers, hit the television screens, first on The History Channel and later on Channel 5.

During the coldest part of winter when temperatures can plummet to below minus 40 Celsius, ice truck drivers haul vital supplies to remote diamond mines in North Canada. To get there, they have to drive cross frozen stretches of the Arctic Ocean and the Mackenzie River that double as ‘ice roads’ in winter. Each year truck drivers from all over North America converge on Yellowknife - the gateway to the 350 mile ice road - to see if they have what it takes to be a ice truck driver. Drivers get paid handsomely for every load they deliver across the ice and, if they  have the stamina and strength to weather the sub zero temperatures, severe Artic blizzards, isolation and lack of creature comforts, they can make a year’s salary in just eight weeks. The downside though is that they have to dice with death as they try to beat the clock and deliver as many truck loads as possible before the arrival of Spring heralds the disappearance of the ice road. 

The video link with Alex Debogorski, who is something of a legend among ice road truckers came about quite by chance, explains Roisin McCaughan, who teaches Primary Six at St Patrick’s PS.

“My brother Seamus Henry has lived in Canada for over 35 years and on a visit home, he called in to talk to my class. As soon as the children heard he was from Yellowknife in Northern Canada, they wanted to know all about the ice truck drivers. They were really excited when they heard that Alex Debogorski who was one of the stars of the first series lives in Yellowknife and that Seamus actually knew him.

“The children had so many questions about ice truck driving that we decided the best thing to do would be to get in touch with Alex so the children could ask him their questions directly.”

Alex agreed immediately to talk to the children via video link and they arranged a mutally convenient date and time – Yellowknife is seven hours behind Loughguile. Before they had their video conference with Alex, Roisin says the children put in a lot of work preparing their questions for Alex.

“It was a wonderful project for the class to get involved in as there was so much scope to learn about different topics such as climate and time zones, The children had all kinds of questions for Alex on everything from the dangers he had to face, how he managed to keep warm, to what he ate on the journey.”

Roisin says that Alex was an ideal person to talk to the children.

“He is a larger than life character and, with eleven children and seven grandchildren of his own, he really enjoyed talking to the class and asking them questions to find out what life was like for them growing up in Ireland.”

The children for their part put on an impromptu concert for Alex and treated him to a rousing rendition of ‘I’ll tell me ma’ as well as some Irish dancing – both of which were included in the CBC news item back in Yellowknife.

“We were in conference for just under an hour and the children were completely enthralled throughout. It was both entertaining and informative for us all to listen to Alex and wonderful to watch the children grow in confidence as they got used to speaking to him.”

Roisin, who admits she was something of a late starter with regards to  technology in the classroom, says she has now been completely won over.

Admitting that her class of 24 boys and girls were absolute treasures to teach, Roisin says she would have no hesitation in recommending the use of videoconferencing in the classroom.

“It’s an enjoyable way to learn and in our case there is no disruption to anyone else in the school. Everything was already in place in the classroom and we were able to use the videoconferencing unit and the  interactive whiteboard as a big screen so that  all the children could see.”

Videoconferencing has tremendous potential in the classroom and the success of the link with Alex the Ice Truck Driver certainly helped whet Roisin’s appetite for further video links. In collaboration with Brian Doyle, a teacher at St Mary’s PS in County Down, children at both schools had a French lesson via video link with a French student who was on placement with C2K. This year her Primary Six class are doing a project on the Vikings and Europe and a video link with a Dublin based Norwegian student is in the pipeline.