Earth Olympics Day 2 - Solar Competition

Day 2 of the Earth Olympics at Edison Environmental Science Academy was an exciting adventure into alternative energy! In addition to the reducing, reusing, and recycling happening around the school, students explored how to harness the sun's energy for a practical purpose: heating water. This event was conducted at every grade level, but this video shows you how the 4th and 5th grade students competed. The real winner? The Earth!

Earth Olympics - Solar Competition from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

The Earth Olympics Have Begun!

At 8:30 AM today, the Earth Olympics at Edison Environmental Science Academy officially launched! We will be tweeting the events as often as possible at http://twitter.com/edisonesa and posting pictures and videos to this blog. Here's a video of the opening ceremony!

Earth Olympics Opening Ceremony from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

Community Night March 2010 - Fill Those Bowls!

What a great time we had at Community Night this week! Art Teacher Ms. Hansen organized a special cooperative effort with Empty Bowls and Kalamazoo Loaves and Fishes so that we could not only serve soup to our families, but send them home with a ceramic bowl made by an Edison student. In case you missed it, here's a quick video with some highlights. Make plans now to attend the next Community Night in June when we announce the winners of the Edison Digital Film Festival!

Oh, have a great Spring Break too! :)

Vote for your favorite in the Edison Digital Film Fest

The Edison Digital Film Festival was unveiled at Literacy Night in February. Many people enjoyed the wonderful short films created by students at Edison Environmental Science Academy and were told that yes, they would be able to view them online. Today we are excited to tell you that they are here for your viewing AND voting!

The films that were submitted can be viewed in our Vimeo channel.

To vote for your favorite, head over to twtpoll!

New Daily Announcements Page

One of the great things we love about Blogger is that Google is always making it better. A recent improvement that we are especially excited about is the ability to make pages, not just blog posts. This is great news if you are using Blogger for a classroom or school blog because you can do neat things like this...

Create a separate page just for daily video announcements!

Click the link at the top of this page or here to see the latest video announcements produced by Edison students.

Students Take Pride in Their Work

One of the wonderful opportunities students at Edison Environmental Science Academy have available to them is the after-school program. Funded by the 21st Century grant, students are able to extend their school day and accentuate their learning in some very exciting ways.

Students are teamed up with adult coaches who make sure they get their snack right after regular dismissal, work with them on homework, and lead them in special activities. Coach Hillsman gave her students a special assignment this past week: a digital camera safari!

With four digital cameras, kids were split into groups and instructed to take pictures of whatever they wanted to around the school. The catch? They had to be ready to explain why they took each picture!

Here's a video that shows some of those pictures. Notice how many pictures are of projects that they have completed and are displayed either in the hallway or in the classrooms. Students at Edison Environmental Science Academy take great pride in their work...and they should! They are doing great things on their journey to a fantastic future in middle school, high school, college, and beyond!

3rd Grade Store

Part of the third grade curriculum has students creating marketing materials to sell school supplies to second graders. They give their prospective customers the choice between normal and eco-friendly products. This video shows what happened at the second attempt to sell eco-friendly items to second grade students.

3rd Grade Store Project from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

Teachers Learning How To Make Videos

One of the things we have integrated into our blog, curriculum, and culture at Edison is the power of video. What used to cost multiple tens of thousands of dollars can now be created with easily accessible laptops, hand-held cameras, and a vision.

August 18-20, 2009, we had the wonderful opportunity to have video journalism training with an expert in the field. Robb Montgomery of Visual Editors provided three days of training to many of our staff. This video provides an overview of the training and the kind of rich media you can expect to see from our teachers and students as we continue to Make A Difference!

Classroom Video Journalism from Anthony Gettig on Vimeo.

Building Scarecrows

Remember when we designed our scarecrows? Today we built them! Watch and see how our ideas went from paper to the garden.

Building Scarecrows from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

Look for the scarecrows

We have a big garden at Pretty Lake this year and we are working hard to take care of it. We don't want the birds and other animals to take what we are growing, so we decided to add some scarecrows! Watch this video and see how we designed them.

Making Scarecrows from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

We are scientists in the wetlands!

On July 2, we spent the morning in the wetlands around Pretty Lake observing the different kinds of life there. We took samples of some of the things we saw there and brought them back to our classroom so we could identify them. See for yourself with this video!

Wetlands Field Study from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

Chickens? Yes! Chickens!

Chickens! from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

Picking and Jamming

We picked them fresh yesterday, and today we made strawberry jam! Watch and see how yummy strawberry jam is made by Edison Garden Camp students!

Making Jam from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

Picking Strawberries

Here is a look at our visit to the strawberry patch. As you can see, there is a lot to learn at a fruit farm!

Picking Strawberries at Garden Camp from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

Daily Chores - Gardening

There are many things that have to be done every day at a farm. One of our daily chores is to work in the garden area. Here is a video that shows a typical morning planting in the garden.

Daily Chores - Gardening from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

Planting Experiment

Filmed by Edison VJ Carmela, this video shows the setup of a planting experiment by two students attending Garden Camp.

Garden Camp Planting Experiment from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

Two Spanish Language Public Service Announcements

Over the past several weeks, Spanish speaking students at Edison have been working closely with Spanish class students from Kalamazoo College. The goal: to produce Public Service Announcements for the benefit of the Spanish speaking community in the West Michigan region. Edison students were involved in every step of the process, from brainstorming script ideas to shooting video.

The two videos produced cover the topics of Type 2 Diabetes and Pesticides. Check them out here, pass along the link to others, and let us know if you know of someone that could benefit from seeing these.

Congratulations to Ms. Vo, Ms. Alia, and all the Edison students that made this project happen! We are so proud of the bilingual students at our school and the important job they did to get this information in a format that will benefit the Spanish speaking community!

La Diabetes Tipo 2 PSA from Anthony Gettig on Vimeo.

Pesticidas PSA from Anthony Gettig on Vimeo.

2nd Grade Planting Experiment - Week 2

Week two brought some surprises for the second grade students in Mrs. McElroy's class. Watch and see what started growing and where!

2nd Grade Growing Week 2 from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

Baby Chicks at Garden Club

This blog started in the summer of 2008 when we started to chronicle the great things happening in our Garden Camp. The enthusiasm and success of the summer program was carried into the school year and now we are preparing for Garden Camp 2009.

Like all living things, we are growing! Garden Camp this summer will be at Pretty Lake Vacation Camp. We are very excited to be able to partner with the wonderful people there, especially Ms. Woollam. She loves the outdoors, gardening, and most importantly, children! Watch this video and see what we're doing in Garden Club...and get a taste of what Garden Camp will be like!

Baby Chicks at Garden Club from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.

2nd Grade Planting Experiment - Week 1

Second grade students are addressing the question "How does economics affect what crops or livestock are produced?" in unit 4 of the new Magnet curriculum. Like all the wonderful teachers at Edison Environmental Science Academy, Mrs. McElroy is leading her students through the inquiry process to find answers to the questions the students created when discussing this.

This is the first video in a series as we track the progress of this exciting scientific inquiry by the amazing second grade students at Edison.

2nd Grade Planting - Week 1 from Edison Environmental Science Aca on Vimeo.