CCA’s Environmental Education Goes Online!
Since many of our spring education programs will no longer happen in the traditional outdoor setting, CCA is creating virtual environmental education content to keep the kiddos learning safely from their homes.
Every spring, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and CCA partner to provide environmental education field trips to hundreds of kids in Mesa, Delta, and Montrose counties. These field trips highlight the local ecology, geology, and history of the National Conservation Areas (NCAs) in a way that lets students understand the land through hands-on interactions and experiences. COVID-19 brought major changes to our programming this year, but the show must go on!
Since students can’t join us in the field right now, our education team is working hard to provide them with a virtual field trip instead! CCA has been working with the BLM and others to film our events on-location; we have recorded each field trip station as though a group of students were sitting behind the camera listening intently. In addition to the field trip stations, we have filmed a Leave No Trace video that teachers can show their students online, so they will still be well prepared for their own outdoor adventures.
We are also producing other educational videos that fall outside of our normal field trip subjects. They will provide the public with quick information on a variety of local topics. For example, there will be videos on insect galls people may see on plants while out hiking (or even in their back yard!) and a video on the characteristics of wilderness.
We’d like to give a HUGE thank you to BLM staff, volunteers, and CCA’s own education team for their dedicated work on these videos. With the rapidly changing situation, these folks sprung into action and produced these videos within days in order to get them to schools on time. Stay tuned for more of our videos throughout the spring!