Eagle cam gives elementary students a different way of learning

BLAIR, Wis. — Blair-Taylor Elementary School students are getting a bird’s-eye view into an exciting way of learning. A video camera is currently focused on an eagle’s nest near Blair and it’s giving students and teachers a host of new lessons.

The program is called Eagles 4 Kids. Mr. Darrin Briggs’ third-grade class at Blair-Taylor Elementary is using the eagle cam quite a bit during the day, and  the two birds in the nest are helping the students to learn not only about eagles, but all subjects in school.

“Right now we do it a lot with writing and geography, and we’ve been doing some math kinds of things; an example, one of our big lessons lately is exactly writing two step story problems. So we go on there and find how many views we’ve had on certain days and then do some comparison problem solving,” Briggs said.

These third-graders are learning more than just math and geography. They’re picking up valuable life lessons from Larry and Lucy.

“I think more than anything in this case it’s special with her and her disability. They can see that, you know, just like people have disabilities, eagles do too. And I think that’s one of the biggest things that they’re learning from it right now,” Briggs said.

Lucy hurt her foot somehow last year and has a peg leg. But her peg leg is part of the reason the class feels so close to her.

“When Lucy brought in something to eat with her peg leg, that was pretty cool,” student Kierstyn Kindscy said.

“You know in this case we can see what goes on out there in the real world for eagles, you know kids can learn that not every day is going to be a good day, life can be tough and you have to roll with the punches,” Briggs said.

Briggs said that there are people who contribute to the Eagles 4 Kids website from 101 countries around the world. He said last year Lucy laid an egg on March 9, so this is a fun wait-and-see time in his classroom.

If you would like to check out the eagles for yourself, you can visit http://www.eagles4kids.com/ or on our website.