1. eCards Offers New Functionality

Take a moment to explore what eCards now has to offer. Recent additions and functional upgrades include:

• an eCards Showcase that allows students to view and send eCards created by students from across Canada. Teachers can nominate as many as three eCards per class. Help us populate the new Showcase by nominating eCards from your 2008/09 classes!
• new introductory videos, produced with students, for Wind Power, Solar Energy, Nuclear Power and Energy Success Stories
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• curriculum connections and assessment rubrics for Alberta and Ontario (other provinces to follow)
• an updated Teacher's Guide
• an interactive wind turbine for the Wind Power topic resource centre.

Click here to test your own knowledge of wind turbines with the new interactive wind turbine from eCards.

In May alone, eCards saw 6900 downloads of its teaching resources. In this popular eLearning program designed for grades 7 to 9, students research an energy topic on the eCards website, create an eCard with their own message and graphics, and then send it, with teacher approval, to a recipient of their choice. To learn more, visit http://ecards.greenlearning.ca.

2. UNICEF Seeks Youth Delegates

Are your students passionate about climate change? UNICEF Canada and GreenLearning are looking for a team of students, ages 14 to 17, to represent Canada at the Children's Climate Forum in Copenhagen, Denmark from November 29 to December 5, 2009.

At the Children's Climate Forum, more than 160 young people from around the world will meet to write a communiqué that will be presented to world leaders at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15) in Copenhagen in December. After COP 15, the youth will be supported as Climate Ambassadors to continue peer engagement activities and collaborate with national partners, environmental organizations, and local and national media.

The deadline for submissions is October 8^th. Visit UNICEF for a link to the contest and to learn more about the online submission process. UNICEF is providing this unique opportunity to young people as part of its global citizenship and human rights education programming. Today's children—and tomorrow's children—are important stakeholders in the dialogue on climate change.

3. New Climate Change Resources Available

In the coming weeks, watch for the launch of a new eCards resource on climate change. With eCards-to-Copenhagen, students learn about climate change, answer research questions about it, and then create eCards with their own messages and graphics. They send their eCards to UNICEF's youth delegates who will take their messages to the upcoming meetings in Copenhagen. eCards-to-Copenhagen meets curriculum expectations in grade 9 and 10 Science, Geography, Language Arts and Media Literacy.

This fall, your students can also collaborate with peers from around the world at UNICEF's Unite for Climate website. In the months leading up to the Children's Climate Forum and COP 15, young people will use this climate change website to discuss, collaborate, share videos and information, and network with youth NGO's and others who are passionate about climate change.

4. Redfish Exceeds Expectations

The first semester of GreenLearning's Redfish School of Change, which ran from May 18 to June 26th and took participants from British Columbia's Slocan Valley to Vancouver Island, was an unqualified success. In the words of one of the sixteen participants: "The Redfish School of Change was the most intellectually stimulating and meaningful experience of my post-secondary career. It not only opened my eyes to the social and environmental concerns in my own community, but how I can be a part of changing them."

The Redfish School of Change is a new partnership program of GreenLearning Canada, Pearson College, and the University of Victoria School of Environmental Studies. Participants of this unique field school are now busy with their community action projects. The Redfish School of Change provides participants with six months of post-program mentorship for their projects.

Click here to see the students in the school's new promotional video, What is the Redfish School of Change?

5. eCards Launches Oil and Gas Unit

With pilot-testing complete, eCards has launched a new topic resource centres for students on Oil and Gas. eCards now includes six topic resource centres: Solar Energy, Wind Power, Nuclear Power, Arctic Glaciers, Energy Success Stories, and Oil and Gas.

The new Oil and Gas unit includes videos with experts in the field as well as global and Canadian facts about crude oil and natural gas. The unit guides students through three key questions:

• How do crude oil and natural gas become energy for human use?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of our use of oil and gas?
• What role will crude oil and natural gas play in our energy future?

Like other eCards resources, this one is primarily designed for students in grades 7 through 9 in Social Science, Geography, Language Arts, and Media Literacy. To see this new resource, click Oil and Gas under Learn More at the eCards website.

6. EnerAction Makes a Move on Sustainable Transportation

EnerAction will pilot test its new Sustainable Transportation unit in grade 4 to 7 classes early this fall. In June, GreenLearning held a series of focus groups with teachers in British Columbia to determine lesson content and then began to develop the lesson plans and support materials.

The new Sustainable Transportation unit will meet curriculum expectations for students across Canada, but in British Columbia they will also complement and provide in-classroom resources for the Hub for Action on School Transportation Emissions (HASTE).

7. Request a Workshop

Did you know that you can request a workshop for your school district? To do so, contact the GreenLearning Director in your region.

8. What's My Password?

Can't remember your password? Click here to get your GreenLearning password and access our resources.

9. Our Thanks

Thank you to The Ontario Trillium Foundation, an agency of the Government of Ontario, for funding the development of eCards-to-Copenhagen as well as an eCards topic resource centre on active citizenship.

Thank you to Suncor Energy Foundation for funding GreenLearning to convene a working group of teachers, education ministry representatives, communications experts, youth and others to conceptually develop a new climate change resource for high school students.