November 1, 1998

Expedition III will explore varied historical events on the Islands and in the Channel region since California Statehood in 1850, and up to the present day. We will start out learning about life on the Island ranches, in the mines, and as a guest at one of the tourism centers. We will learn about a life long search for buried treasure, about the struggles to keep the ranching businesses in operation, and about the men and women who invested in the Islands and raised families there. Depending on the time you can spend in this section, you may want to "Adopt a Channel Island " and after reading the general introduction, focus attention on the history of one island if your time is limited. Nov. 2-13.

Then we move to the arts and culture of the California Channel and its mysterious islands, and enjoy the works of famous writers, painters, film and stage stars, musicians, artisans - even surfers - who have created notable works inspired by the California Channel. Nov. 16-25.

Then the Expedition closes with a look at commercial development of the Channel - its perils and promises, from the discovery of oil to fishing to mariculture, and we will also take a look at the history of diving in the Channel. We will close the Expedition by taking at look at the devastating oil spill of 1969 that shocked the nation and launched the environmental movement. Nov 30-Dec 4.

This week we need you to fill out the Field Report form on the Camp web site as a review of the first 6 weeks of the program. Let us know what is working well for your students in the Camp, and what improvements can be made to make your learning activities more fruitful. We will ask you to complete these approximately every 6 weeks as part of the assessment process.

More images have been added to the Gallery in the last week, please share them with your class. We hope to have a representation of work from every class so they can share their work with one another. Speaking of sharing, some students are trying to use the list serv to develop a conversation with other students - but to make this successful, we need more students logging into their email accounts to read and respond. In a one-computer-classroom, try letting them log in by clan name once a week to read and send email. This is a skill they need to gain as part of the technology literacy skill development process.

We are adding classes to the calendar who can coordinate a family night in their classroom November 15-19. Others are asking about a December night. We are flexible on these up to a point, and will work with you to co-host a Community Night at your school. The goal is to share news of your Camp activities with your larger community - and to build support towards the year end classroom field trip. We will host these again in the Spring to help your school build community support for continued Camp activities.

We are coordinating chat sessions with new Trail Guides for Expedition III. We are tentatively looking at November 12^th and 24^th for two live chat sessions, but will keep you posted. And the chocolate gold coins arrived and are awaiting classes to complete the Shipwrecked! Learning game. We will know it has been undertaken when we see the postings to the camp-students-l@rain.org list serv. And a few of the star classes who participated in the chat room treasure hunts over the last two weeks will also be sent the coins.