Gener8 Edmonton Application Deadline This Week

Inside Education’s second youth conference  (this one is in partnership with the City of Edmonton) is coming up. It aims to help Edmonton teachers and high school students understand the science and technology of energy development, use and conservation at school, home and in the community.

The format is interactive – with teams of four to six students, plus one teacher attending. There is no cost to attend and your meals, materials and transportation during the conference are included. Inside Education can even provide a substitute teacher subsidy (as necessary) of up to $225 for the 1.5 days. But you need to apply by February 10, 2012. So what are you waiting for? Get your team together today and apply online. Or if you have questions, contact Steve McIsaac or Karin Hedetniemi at Inside Education 780-421-1497.

Making the grade on energy

It’s easy to lose sight of our energy. After all, it’s invisible. Whether we’re silently fuelling our cars or turning on a light switch that allows current to flow, we use energy every day without actually seeing its source. But in a world that calls for increased energy efficiency and alternative approaches to the sources we’re used to using, losing sight of our energy just doesn’t work anymore.

In 2009, The Canadian Centre for Energy Information conducted a poll (376KB PDF) that found a full 59 per cent of respondents felt disconnected from energy policy-making decisions and only about half felt informed about energy issues in their country. This, despite the fact that a slate of (sometimes bizarre) technologies, alternate sources of transportation, and fundamental changes in the ways we use energy are changing our lives every day. Energy is changing, which means that our education has to keep pace.

Provincial and territorial energy strategy documents have consistently identified energy awareness as an important factor in any future energy plans. Alberta, for example, identifies awareness as one of its “Desired Outcomes” in its 2008 energy strategy document, while the Government of the Northwest Territories calls for “provid[ing] information and research on emerging technologies, their potential application in the NWT, and develop Alternative Energy Demonstration Projects” as one of its main energy strategy objectives.

To raise this awareness, governments have tried to educate energy consumers both on the way they already use energy — though energy efficiency campaigns, such as those produced by Quebec’s Agence de l’efficacité énergétique — and the ways in which energy is changing — such as demonstration projects like Nova Scotia’s Fundy Tidal Energy Demonstration Project. Government programs run the gamut from awareness campaigns to simple changes in existing programs, like Quebec’s resolution to provide efficient driving techniques as part of driver training, but they aren’t the only ones set to educate consumers. The energy sector, with its literal investment in the energy you use, regularly provides educational opportunities for consumers.

Among energy providers, energy conservation campaigns, like Enmax’s “GreenMax”, provide material benefits to consumers. Use less, they suggest, and pay less. Other outreach efforts, however, provide more direct educational programs. Here are three upcoming events produced by the private sector to educate Canadian consumers.

While new, more compact generating technologies provide an ever-increasing number of options for decentralizing our power, the electricity grid continues to play an essential role in our day-to-day lives. Presented by Inside Education, an upcoming Electricity Education Tour (April 22 – 24) will help participants take a look at the seemingly invisible net of electricity that powers Canadian homes.

Energy in Action (May 3 – May 28), produced by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, has been providing community programs on energy since 2004. Its activities, designed to showcase the organization’s environmental stewardship — a common goal of industry outreach — will take place in schools across eight Western provinces this year.

GeoCanada 2010 (May 10 – 14), a conference that invites a raft of energy professionals will also include an educational component for the public. Five of them, in fact. From a poster competition designed to encourage students to consider geology in their communities to a full two-day program with hands-on exhibits, these GeoCanada Community initiatives are designed to share professionals’ knowledge with the general public.

More than a garden

Herb gardens, pumpkin patches, new spruce trees – these are just some of the results of a hard day’s work for elementary students participating in the Energy in Action Program.

The Energy in Action program is a collaborative endeavour of oil and gas companies under the auspices of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP). The program spreads the message of environmental stewardship to students in grades four to six through an interactive classroom experience and a hands-on environmental project. In May, 35 oil and gas companies participated in events in 11 communities in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Besides spreading the stewardship message, the program also gives the students a better understanding of where energy comes from.

This happens during the first half of the day in the classroom with the help of CAPP’s education partner, Inside Education, a not-for-profit society that provides natural resources and environment education focused on forests, water, energy and related topics.

“It’s a fabulous program,” says Inside Education senior educator Anne Logan. “Everywhere we go we’re making a huge difference.”

Logan expands on what the kids are learning about sustainability in the regular social studies curriculum giving additional information on where energy comes from and how it is used in our everyday lives – information that often comes as a big surprise.

“(The kids) don’t always know all the products that are made from petroleum or that their furnaces burn natural gas,” says Logan, adding that by grade six they have a stronger understanding of the industry.

The program gives students a balanced presentation of Canada’s energy sources. A play teaches them how to get petroleum out of the ground and objects made from both the renewable and non-renewable energy industry are passed around the classroom.

According to Logan, while many of the students may be aware of pollution concerns associated with non-renewable energy they are often unaware of the numerous benefits and challenges related to the use of both renewable and non-renewable sources. Logan explains that, at their age, the students aren’t exposed to the economic, social and political issues surrounding energy development so it is up to the Energy in Action teachers to bring some balance into the discussion.

“We talk to them about how nothing is perfect, even wind and that each one of them has pros and cons,” says Logan. “They don’t understand that we can’t meet our energy needs just with renewables – we try and get them to see both sides.”

With the seed of stewardship planted during the morning’s lesson, the kids are able to cultivate this new knowledge through an outdoor activity that has meaning to their school and community. In each community, the kids take on a unique environmental project with the help of representatives from oil and gas companies with operations in the area, their teachers and community volunteers.

“All these communities have an environmental vision and if we can help them or participate in that, that’s what stewardship is all about,” says Energy in Action coordinator Laura Perry. “The program is a good opportunity for the kids to experience stewardship first hand and make a difference.”

For Perry, this year’s visit to Beaverlodge, Alberta is an ideal example of how Energy in Action gets entire communities excited about stewardship and fulfills CAPP’s vision of groups working together to complete the project and make it sustainable. Beaverlodge students planted spruce saplings along the river banks of a local farmer’s property with the help of the local municipality, Alberta Conservation, the Energy Resources Conservation Board, their teachers and representatives from ConocoPhillips, EnCana, Talisman, Canadian Natural Resources, Devon Canada and Bonavista.

In other cases, the stewardship activity is focused closer to home in the students’ schoolyard. Through Energy in Action concrete schoolyards are transformed into vibrant gardens and, in some cases, outdoor classrooms with shade trees, benches, sundials and weather stations.

As Anne Logan points out, “For some of these schools they didn’t have much in their schoolyards so this will make a big difference.”

Besides building knowledge of the energy industry and spreading the word about stewardship, the program also has benefits for participating companies. “Companies get to know the communities where they’re operating and get the opportunity to get to know the local town councils and get to know each other,” says Perry. Establishing these relationships helps the companies work better with each other and with the community on issues related to their operations in the area such as noise or environmental impacts.

Inside Education brings Albertan energy into the classroom

Alberta is a province fuelled by energy revenue, with a projected surplus of $1.6 billion for 2008 that could rise as high as $12 billion. So it’s hardly surprising that, with billions of dollars and millions of barrels of oil pouring into the provincial economy, Albertans are keenly interested in learning more about their natural resources.

And where better to start learning than the classroom?

One of the organizations trying to provide information on the boggling numbers of Alberta’s energy network is Inside Education, a nonprofit society offering educational materials to Alberta students from kindergarten through high school. Since 1985, Inside Education has collaborated with partners in the energy industry, government and other non-profit organizations, like Ducks Unlimited, to provide information and teaching materials on the province’s most essential resources.

“We provide a balanced approach to issues,” says Inside Education’s executive director, Steve McIsaac. “We bring in use, production, conservation, and climate change, but there’s also really been a willingness on the part of industry to share both the challenges and the opportunities they’re facing, to be responsible citizens who maintain the social license to operate.

“There’s an openness to multiple perspectives, and that’s what we’ve really been about: a strong buy-in to encourage multiple points of view.”

To encourage that openness, Inside Education provides classroom resources that fall under three categories: classroom resources, including kits, videos and worksheets; guest speakers who speak in schools across Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan; and background information for teachers themselves. This educator information often includes tours of essential locations related to Alberta’s energy network, such as the Athabasca oilsands, coalbed methane facilities and Pincher Creek’s iconic wind farms.

For McIssac, who’s been working with Inside Education since he was a summer intern in 1992, Albertans’ interest in their energy has changed as drastically as the technology and processes themselves, which have seen the mainstream introduction of alternative energy sources like wind power. He recalls his own experiences in Alberta’s school system, and believes that the current information available to students places an emphasis on environmental stewardship that’s contrasts with his own memories.

And it isn’t just the students who are learning.

“They [teachers] are Albertans too, members of society,” he notes. “And I think society is on a steep learning curve on the whole. Whether it’s the price at the pump, climate change, or what is green power and what’s not, it’s all about: ‘How can I conserve energy in my daily life, or at school, etc.?’”

The opportunity for Inside Education, then, is that while Albertans aren’t necessarily experts on their province’s most visible industry, the willingness to understand it continues to drive demand for his organization’s materials. It’s a willingness McIsaac has seen evolve through the years.

“I think we’ve seen an increase in the complexity of understanding and depth of questions. Whether it’s from teachers or from students, that complexity has really grown exponentially,” he says. “In the early ‘90s, there was some understanding there was some sort of energy industry in our province, and if I turn on the lights I can be pretty confident there will be light there. Carbon footprint, of course, was a word not even considered in the not too distant past.”

Maintaining contact with their partners on a day-to-day basis, Inside Education’s main task is to translate the information being passed to them into accessible material that maintains the complex answers teachers are looking for. With a staff of 16 full-time employees, making them the largest not-for-profit natural resources education group in the country, the organization tries to bridge the gap between their partners and teachers, adding regular teacher consultations to complement their partner contact.

“We take multiple opportunities to meet throughout the year, whether it’s teaching conventions or our own professional workshops, we’ve become a trusted source for teachers to seek out information,” says McIsaac. “While we don’t pretend to be the content experts, we do provide access to experts and we do encourage teachers to make their own connections in industry and government. We’ve come to understand that experts in these fields love to talk to teachers, which is a really beneficial relationship we’ve created over the last few years.”

By emphasizing classroom materials and personal workshops with teachers, McIssac concedes that Inside Education tends to emphasize more traditional media over an online presence. Primarily focusing on traditional pen-and-paper and multimedia classroom materials, the organization supplements its educational resource by pointing to sites like www.greenlearning.ca and the Canadian Centre for Energy Information. But 23 years of operating in a changing Alberta haven’t left the organization without the flexibility to adapt, and Inside Education’s website does include a blog and an online catalogue of resources providing further, expert information.

Along with a curriculum that already makes Albertan students more aware than ever about the challenges and responsibilities of energy use, Inside Education is helping to create a more informed generation of students and teachers. It’s a mission that’s essential for an energy-based economy like Alberta’s, and one that still provides its own welcome surprises along the way. Alberta students, it seems, are listening.

“They’re far more adept than we thought they would be,” says McIssac. “It’s one of the joys of this job: watching the growth and depth of understanding.”