Community Involvement

Community Involvement

Community involvement has been a big goal of this project from the start.  We saw this grant as an opportunity to involve more students, more classes, and more community members to get engaged with Geography, map-making and connecting with our local environment.  We hope that this will raise awareness, provide understanding and help gain a new perspective on our local environment and special place in the world.

We have been planning for some field trips, hikes, adventures and outdoor opportunities that will include talks with local elders from the WSÁNEĆ communities that surround and support our school community and involve our students and support staff.  In April and May, the goal will be to get outdoors, look at some of native plants, learn about some of the sustainable food practices, local hunting and fishing and important cultural spots around the peninsula.

We have a local map of all the place names in the SENĆOŦEN alphabet that will be added as a layer onto our map.  Here is a copy zoomed into the peninsula:

Project Update

Project Update

Our project progress was a little slow this month as we only really had a couple of weeks, and then Spring Break.  Our main class we are working with this term spent the time learning all about crafting evidence based essays, so we were focused on that inside and did not have much time for our map making project.    Our hope is to hit the ground and get outside starting in April, when the weather we will be nicer (we had a lot of snow the last few weeks!).

We hope to get outside, capture some footage and begin training some of the new students in how to do the video editing and manipulating of our content to built and create small little artifacts to add to our map.    In concert with our other update this month, we also hope to add a new Indigenous layer to the map with local SENĆOŦEN names and important places labelled on the map.

Personally, I have been working on a recreation of the Saanich Peninsula, and Southern Vancouver Island in a simulator called City Skylines.  Here is a small video tour of the Victoria and the Saanich Peninsula area below.  This simulator allows you to import any map from around the world and then begin building your city, infratrstructure and services.  It is not a 1:1 recreation, but it allows us to create an interactive version of the map, and to learn about different impacts on the region.  Check it out: