EcoKids Video Project - EcoReporters from the Frontline

Last week, I got some great news. I had applied to an office called EcoKids, the youth branch of Earth Day Canada, to be one of six school classes across Canada to receive a Sony video camera in order to document environmental projects and activities in and around our school. These videos would be then posted to the EcoKids website for kids around the country (and of course the world) to see. They call this project "EcoReporters from the Frontline". Well, they accepted my submission, so we're one of the six! Pretty exciting! We should receive the camera next week, just in time to document the salmon swimming up a creek very close to our school to spawn. That will be our first of three videos or photo-stories we will produce throughout the year.

I took my Grade 4's down to the creek last week to see how many fish there are right now, with the low water level. We saw a few dead ones and 2 or 3 live ones, real BIG ones, struggling valiantly in a few centimeters of water to jump over rock ledges to get upstream. The students were pretty excited, and thought they would give the fish a helping hand by pushing them along with sticks. I helped them realize that the fish need to do it on their own, that poking them would only hamper their efforts. We hope that the autumn rains come soon in enough volume to raise the water level in the creek to allow more fish to make the trip to their spawning grounds.

So in a few weeks, you can go to http://www.ecokids.ca/ and check out our video. I'll keep you posted on the progress of our productions. With any luck, I'll have a class of little David Suzukis by Christmas!