Garden Pals: Video Exchange

It's always fun to visit other school's gardens to see their diversity of crops and their activities, but sometimes that just isn't feasible. Most teachers would love to have their students visit a garden in Guatemala to experience a different gardening culture, but most won't be able to do that.

A great option for "visiting" other school gardens is to participate in a video exchange with other schools around the state, country, or world! Wouldn't it be amazing for your students to see their video pen pals from Ecuador growing corn and then standing in a banana jungle?

All you need to create a garden video is a thriving garden and a camcorder. You can either mail the videocassettes or post the video to be shared with another school online.

What should your video show? Keep it simple and interesting--15 to 20 minutes is plenty. Let your students each narrate a small portion, introducing themselves and showing the school and the garden. You can demonstrate the garden games you play or have students talk about their garden stories.

Where can you find schools to share these videos with? If you want to share your video with schools in Wisconsin, visit the http://bit.ly/9LxKhH for the names of school gardens around the state. For a country wide or worldwide garden, simply do a google search, contact the schools you think would interest your students and begin the communication process.

Happy Traveling!