December 2003: We are very grateful for funding provided by the Shell Environmental Fund for assistance in the operation of the racerocks.com activity, and archived and live video of the website.
Jonathan (Newfoundland), Emmanuel (Ghana), Sonam (Bhutan), Stephanie (Shell), Tya (Indonesia), Jano (Slovakia), Garry (faculty).
The funds will be used for upgrading the software and hardware to allow greater participation of students in the production of the archived video and the Race Rocks Taxonomy
In particular, this fund will help in funding:
1. Support of the portion of the project which is dedicated to providing regular live webcasts to schools and museums.
2. Upgrading and enhancement of the Race Rocks taxonomy project. This class assignment allows students in environmental systems and biology to link in educational videos of species in their habitats at Race Rocks, thus providing an enriched educational resource. We have also linked to this exercise a template to encourage other schools to use a similar approach for recognition and conservation of biodiversity in their own local ecosystems.
3. The purchase of additional equipment and software dedicated to more efficient compression of digital video and for an enhanced program of Live web casting to school rooms directly from the Ecological Reserve.
THE SHELL ENVIRONMENT FUND IN ACTION:
Emmanuel and Paul were two students who had participated in the Johan Ashuvud week in June and as well as providing daily hour long webcasts at the time. While on the island, they used the new camera and computer to produce a number of educational videos which are now on the website.
A highlight of the week was the production of webcasts for several school groups that came out to Race Rocks as part of the program.