Here are some education initiatives I have been involved in over the years.
Live It Earth
In the past six years, Live It Earth’s team has produced over 40 educational programs in collaboration with school districts, First Nations communities, various levels of government, non-governmental organizations, and other institutions that have reached over 41K students and educators.
Program highlight: Live It Earth’s has co-created a digital story of Chief Kw’eh, an important historical figure of the Carrier People. Live It Earth worked with students and the Nak’azdli Whut’en people in School District 91 to share this rich and powerful story. The trailer for this program can be found here: https://app.liveit.earth/en/programs/chief-kweh-community
Parents and teachers: This is your Canadian Hybrid Learning Library: Explore engaging, place-based programs and hybrid learning resources!
Students across BC, Yukon and NWT now have full access to the Live It Earth’s educational resources thanks to Focused Education Resources!
All resources are bilingual, with separate English and French versions, and are designed to inspire learning, both inside and outside of the classroom. Read more: https://bit.ly/3QzdSQf
“Live It Earth is a visually-rich, place-based, and BC-created resource that incorporates Indigenous perspectives and is available in both English and French.” Kelly Pollack, Executive Director for Focused ED.
Live Dives
Precursor to Live It Earth, we have ran live dives under the Fish Eye Project, a BC nonprofit that allowed students to take part in interactive, engaging and inspirational educational experiences. From a salmon run live in Campbell River to an Arctic Live Dive in Cambridge Bay (2017), we have streamed scientists and traditional knowledge holders from the field in real-time to classrooms. We also streamed to IMAX theatres, Science Centres, and Aquariums. We would love to do more live dives and have the capacity to do so under Live It Earth with our ocean enthusiasts partners.
Some testimonials:
“This is the beginning of an international movement”
- Mayor Lisa Helps, Victoria, BC
“It felt like we were communicating with an astronaut… only, underwater”
- Feenie, grade 6 student, Victoria, BC
Fish Eye Project short trailer:
Tell me and I forget,
teach me and I remember,
involve me and I learn.- Benjamin Franklin
Participatory Arts-based Workshops
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Autumn School in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) with in-person workshop on photovoice, participatory video and community mapping.
Organized by the Swedish International Center for Local Democracy (ICLD), CIFAL Victoria, UN Habitat and UVic, the in-person workshop was a culmination of a 5-week course on community-based approach and arts-based tools (community mapping, participatory video, photovoice) in support of the SDGs. 30 participants composed of local government officials and researchers from Kenya, Tanzania, and Sweden, attended the workshop. Here are reflections from the week with a short video highlight of the workshop on ICLD’s website.
Tuktoyaktuk, Canada (2018-)
Inuvialuit youth-led film on climate change produced. See Research tab
Kaktovik and Point Lay, Alaska (2012)
Film workshop for Inupiat youth in the Arctic along with the ShoreZone coastal mapping program. The 1-week filmmaking workshop aimed to give a voice to youth where they interviewed elders, documented their own knowledge of the coast, and joined us in the helicopter to take aerial footage to produce films. Two workshops took place, one in Kaktovik and one in Point Lay, on the North Slope of Alaska. See news coverage here: Shorezone Collaboration Brings Filmmaking to Arctic Students.
Tracy Burns from Kaktovik saw her film shown in three international film festivals.
Tracy Burns works on her short film about erosion in Kaktovik from the air. Burns was one of a few dozen students between Kaktovik and Point Lay to take part in filmmaking workshops. Photo: Maeva Gauthier
See her film on coastal erosion here (4min):
Curriculum Development
A Sense of Place: Inupiat Knowledge of the Coast using Aerial Imagery
The ShoreZone Sense of Place project uses North Slope coastal imagery as a medium for recording traditional knowledge about the coast. Imagery is a powerful medium for triggering elders’ memories and stories about places they have lived, hunted and experienced. The project offers an approach for youth and elders to record those memories and stories. It will further the efforts of the North Slope Borough School District to implement the new Iñupiaq Learning Framework and will make aerial imagery of the North Slope coast available to teachers and students. More info: http://arcticlcc.org/projects/human-system/sense-of-place/.