1. Did We Make the Grade?

Help us evaluate and improve our programs by completing the 2011 GreenLearning survey. Please take a few minutes to answer our questions about your experience with GreenLearning. Your feedback is invaluable to us as we work to improve and expand our programming.

All teachers who complete the survey will be entered into a draw for prizes including Chapters gift cards.

2. Results of the 2010/11 Solar Oven Challenge!

Congratulations to all 28 classes and clubs who participated in this year's Solar Oven Challenge! Teachers and students found the experience to be an engaging and tasty way to learn about solar power.

Honours with Distinction

• St. Marks School, Grades 5 & 6, Mississauga, ON (featured here)
  Teacher: Anne Paquin
• St. Elizabeth Catholic High School, Grade 11 Environmental Science, Thornhill, ON
  Teacher: Jocelyn Shih

Honours

• Queen Elizabeth High School, Student Led Initiatives for Sustainable Education (SLISE), Grades 10 to 12, Edmonton, AB
  Teacher: Aaron Dublenko
• Hunter's Glen Junior Public School, Eco-Club, Grades 5 & 6,
  Scarborough, ON
  Teachers: Barb Myers & Maria Harvey

Participants who were awarded Honours with Distinction will receive a class set of solar cars from SunWind Solar Industries Inc. In the coming weeks, see these submissions and more photographs at the re-energy.ca website.

3. Energized in Bonnyville & Lac La Biche

Almost 400 students in grades 4, 5, and 7 in Bonnvyille and Lac La Biche schools - Duclos School, Central Elementary School, and Dr. Swift Middle School - enjoyed visits from GreenLearning last month thanks to support from Devon Energy Corporation.

With the help of EnerAction Lesson #3: Where's the Power?, Grade 4 students worked at energy stations and learned about the uses of different energy sources and their environmental impact. The students especially enjoyed making a solar car move and using wind power to turn on an LED light.

Grade 5 students demonstrated the electrical grid. Using the Build a House eLearning activity in Electricity All Around Us, they also made decisions about purchasing and using electrical appliances in their online house.

Grade 7 students used the eCards website to research energy sources. They also explored Alberta's ecoregions and discovered different plant and animal species using the What Am I? eLearning activity from Real World Ecosystems.

To request a GreenLearning workshop in your area in 2011/12, contact us.

4. Another Unforgettable Experience With Redfish

The third semester of the Redfish School of Change ran from May 3 to June 4, with participants travelling from Little Slocan Lodge in the West Kootenays to Vancouver.

Participants Carley, Chris and Isabel describe their last two weeks in this unique field school in the Redfish School of Change blog:

These last two weeks of the program are all about transitions. We've gone from the natural to the industrial along the Fraser, to arrive in the urban of Vancouver. We traded thermarests for mattresses, canoes for translink, colemans for stocked kitchens, and sanitized-rubbing-around-dirt hands for showers and cleanliness. Tomorrow we depart for Galiano Island, where we will be both car camping and back-packing - two more transitions. The hardest transition of all will most likely be the journey home. Our community has grown and flourished together and this has truly been an unforgettable experience.

5. Be Cool This Summer With COOL 2.0

GreenLearning will launch COOL 2.0 late this summer! Before going live with this exciting new online community for teaching and learning about climate
change, we want to give COOL 2.0 a thorough test, and would appreciate your help.

As the go-to hub for the best in climate change education, COOL 2.0 will offer resources for high school science, social studies, business/economics, language arts, design and technology. The COOL 2.0 database will include lesson plans and activities, videos, research and data, and collaborative projects. These resources will come from teachers, from GreenLearning's suite of programs, and from our many partners - among them, SEEDS, EcoSpark, Wild BC, and Zerofootprint. COOL 2.0 will also feature a TeacherSpace and ClassSpace where you can create and manage rich learning experiences for your students on a robust Web 2.0 platform. GreenLearning is developing COOL 2.0 in partnership with Taking it Global.

Interested in testing COOL 2.0 before we launch it across Canada? To volunteer or to learn more, contact Gordon Harrison.

6. Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

Special thanks from all of us at GreenLearning to Nicole Treitz, a teacher candidate with OISE/UT's Inner City option, who has worked with us over the last five weeks during her OISE internship. Nicole joined GreenLearning at an exciting time in the development of COOL 2.0 and worked to seek out exemplary climate change education resources for the COOL 2.0 database. Thank you Nicole! We wish you every success in your teaching career.

7. Our Thanks

As a not-for-profit organization, our work is made possible only through the generous support of our sponsors and donors. We extend our thanks to
TD Bank Group for its generous support of the development of COOL 2.0, an online climate change community for Canadian teachers and students.