SEAS Community Initiative
Overview
The SEAS (Supporting Emerging Aboriginal Stewards) Community Initiative is an educational program focused on utilizing new technology, experiential learning, and locally-relevant resources to connect youth with the lands and waters of their traditional territories. Piloted in the coastal First Nations communities of Bella Bella and Hartley Bay, the program uses interactive whiteboards, remote wildlife cameras, and outdoor natural history training to bring ecology and conservation to life and to cultivate a new generation of stewards and natural resource managers of the Great Bear Rainforest.SEAS is a collaboration between Pacific Wild, the Bella Bella and Hartley Bay community schools, The Nature Conservancy, Qqs Projects Society, Gitga'at Land and Resources Stewardship Society, and CetaceaLab.
Technology in the Classroom
Pacific Wild works with the schools to use new technology as a tool to engage youth in conservation and science. We install pan-tilt-zoom and underwater cameras at key points in the rainforest and marine environment and stream the footage into the schools. These remote cameras provide a window into wildlife ecology that is transmitted live to classrooms where the students can control the cameras with a click of the mouse (see Field Cameras for clips). Pacific Wild is also in the process of installing hydrophones to bring live audio of cetaceans into the schools.As a part of the SEAS program, touch-sensitive, web-enabled interactive whiteboards (SMARTBoards) were procured for the two schools, enabling the development of interactive teaching modules and a video conferencing student exchange program. Pacific Wild helps in the development of educational modules that can be used with the SMARTBoards, in conjunction with the live feed from the remote cameras.