As students settle in for a new school year – whether at home or in the classroom – the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) is providing a variety of online videos through its EGLE Classroom initiative that teachers and parents can use to supplement school lessons all year long.

Want to learn more about how you can interact with the environment? EGLE Classroom will share new content each week hosted by subject matter experts either on EGLE’s staff or through its partners. Environmental education is an essential ingredient for developing environmental stewardship.

“EGLE Classroom will help instructors to think about how to talk to their students on ways to interact with the natural world around them,” said Liesl Clark, director of EGLE. “We want this to be a two-way collaboration and urge teachers and students to create their own videos that can be shared with others across Michigan as a statewide resource.”

Director Clark calls the class to order with this video. New material will be released each Tuesday.

We’re also looking for some help from teachers and students around Michigan. Record a quick classroom lesson or demonstration, post it to Twitter using the hashtag #EGLEClassroom and don’t forget to tag @MichiganEGLE. Sharing knowledge beyond classroom walls benefits students across the state, wherever and whenever they are doing their schoolwork.

EGLE also has updated its EGLE Classroom educational resources webpage. There, you’ll find classroom resources from EGLE and its partners to assist students and instructors with information on environmental topics. Come back to the webpage often as it will be continually updated with new videos and other instruction materials.

Still looking for more content that can broaden school or at-home lessons about the environment? Check out EGLE’s YouTube channel, where we’ve posted dozens of videos from EnviroMinute shorts to in-depth presentations by staff or recordings of webinars and public information sessions. There’s the Brownfield Flip series, Shoreline Stewards, sustainability issues, lectures and presentations.