Insights and Commentaries
SaskPower CCS Challenge awards announced
15th March 2015
Topic(s): Communication, Education, Public engagement
The winners of the hotly contested SaskPower CCS Challenge have been revealed. The announcement follows an innovative education program run by Boundary Dam's operator, SaskPower, and the Regina Catholic School Division (RCSD), with local schools in Regina, Canada. Students from across the city joined the program to learn about carbon dioxide (CO2), low-carbon energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, and how they could share their learning internationally through the CO2degrees Education program from the Global CCS Institute. With creative Challenge entries covering every genre from music videos, to Lego 'mockumentaries', to viral videos, these Saskatchewan students have really raised the bar with their science communication challenges.
SaskPower’s President of CCS Initiatives, Mike Monea, was so impressed with the student responses he has started talent spotting for future recruitment: “I was delighted to see the enthusiasm and genuine interest these grade 6 and 7 kids had for this new technology and SaskPower’s Boundary Dam project. I told them that I hoped they would one day come work at SaskPower because it is their creative and open minds that will drive innovations for sustainable power generation into the future."
The Results
- Tier One - Full Class Challenge - Winner: St Timothy School
- Tier Two - Small Group Challenge - Winner: Javita Gabriel and Emily Howard, St. Andrew School
- Tier Two - Small Group Challenge - First Runner Up: Ben McLeod, Ethan Halvorson and Colin Quach, St. Mary School
- Tier Two - Small Group Challenge - Second Runner Up: Madison Randal, Lauren Nelson and Grace Shourie, St Andrew School
- Tier Two - Small Group Challenge - Honourable Mention: Katelyn Kleisinger, Rachel Allen and Brenna Metz, St. Andrew School
The Prizes
These talented young movie makers have each earned their CO2degree and will see their work published and shared with educators and students across the world through the CO2degrees Education Challenge on CO2Degrees.com.
Over the last few weeks, the Boundary Dam CCS Project Team from SaskPower have been making surprise visits to the winning schools to deliver fabulous prizes to the top-rated entries. Prizes have included a class prize of five Lenovo Yoga Tablets and a small group prize of iPad minis.
SaskPower Senior Analyst, Erin Lord said: “It has been great hand delivering the prizes to the winning students. They have all worked so hard on their entries, with creative and engaging videos that really show off their thorough understanding of our climate and energy challenges and the role that CCS technology can play in helping tackle some of them.”
To add to the award ceremony excitement, hundreds of students from the winning schools were able to take part in the SaskPower-Power to grow experience - an enormous tent full of innovative technology to help Grade 5-8 students learn more about power generation and how CCS fits into the bigger picture of exploring all the possible solutions for producing sustainable, affordable, low-carbon electricity in Saskatchewan.
The SaskPower-Power to grow experience was enjoyed by hundreds of students. Image: Courtesy of the Regina Catholic School Division.
Early Reactions
The students from St Timothy School, Winners of the Tier One - Full Class Challenge, were very excited about their achievement. They were keen to point out that their teacher’s only contribution to their Challenge was to hold the camera. A very proud Mr Owen confirmed that the students had really taken the Challenge to heart; researching their topic, storyboarding and scripting their video, and then choreographing their whole class to play their part in a very active short film, inspired by a viral YouTube video.
Grade 7 at St Timothy School proudly holding their CO2degrees. Image: Courtesy of the Regina Catholic School Division.
When asked what the students had enjoyed most about their work on the SaskPower CCS Challenge, one of the girls from the St Andrew School hat-trick of award winners said that "it had been really fun and interesting to learn about a project that was not only a first for Saskatchewan, but also for the world".
St Andrew School scored a hat-trick of winners in the Tier 2 Challenge. Image: Courtesy of the Regina Catholic School Division.
The Regina Catholic School Division (RCSD), under the careful guidance of Maths and Science Consultant, Donna Ell, has already completed an award winning set of Carbon Capture and Storage resources. RCSD was very pleased with the results of their schools participation in the Challenge event saying:
“RCSD is proud of the timely and innovative CCS resources that we created which lead us to partner with SaskPower and the Global CSS Institute to plan and create the SaskPower Workshop and Challenge for our grade 7 students. Thanks to our partners, the workshop was a day full of fun and exciting hands-on learning followed by the Challenge which allowed students to expand their knowledge of this topic with continued research and cool exploration. It is exciting for our students and school division to know that our student’s work is going global and being shared with other students around the world learning about this important topic!” - Donna Ell, Mathematics and Science Consultant, Regina Catholic School Division.
Ethan, Ben and Colin - Ecole St Mary’s First Runners-Up with proud teacher Elizabeth Stephenson, SaskPower’s Erin Lord and RCSD’s Donna Ell. Image: Courtesy of the Regina Catholic School Division.
View the winning entries
All of the SaskPower CCS Challenge award-winning videos are available to view now on CO2degrees.com. Please follow the reactions on the CO2degrees Twitter and Facebook feeds.
If you would like to know more about CCS education or the CO2degrees Education Challenge then please contact Kirsty Anderson from the Global CCS Institute.