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NUNAVUT
With one-third of her Grade 6 and 7 students already smoking regularly, Lindsay Copp is eager for her class to receive an iPod Touch to start making an anti-smoking ad for a pan-territorial program called Get Reel.

Students across the North will be using iPods to create anti-smoking ads that will be shared through social media. - photo courtesy Smoke Screening 8

"I have quite a few in my class who are at that age of smoking if they haven't already," said Copp, who teaches a dozen students at Inuksuit School in Qikiqtarjuaq. "Hopefully we'll learn a lot to discourage them (from smoking)."

Get Reel is a new program spinning out of the Smoke Screening project that is now in its eighth year. The project did not run last year, but ran the previous seven. Through Smoke Screening, grade 6 to 12 classes receive DVDs containing 13 ads from around the world, and students vote for their favourite. The most popular ad airs on TV.

"One of the things we heard from teachers in previous years is they'd like to see more Northern content in these ads," said tobacco reduction specialist Alana Kronstal. "The ads are really slick and cool, but it would be neat if the kids saw faces from the North."

This year, students from Nunavut, NWT and the Yukon will put their own faces in ads to be shared through social media. Health Canada funding is being used to provide each of up to 100 Northern classes with an iPod Touch pre-loaded with video editing software and instructional videos.

Using the iPod's on-board camera and software, each class will create a 30-second anti-smoking advertisement, and the best from each territory - as judged by filmmakers, health professionals, and social media voters - will win a prize.

Registration opened Jan. 1 and the video submission deadline is April 15.

"We haven't gotten into the planning yet, but the most difficult part will be determining what we want in that 30 seconds," said Copp. "We talked about having the kids re-enact some ways smoking influences smokers, so we'll have some kids be 'smokers' and others be 'non-smokers' and be running and show how they can't breathe."

In Pond Inlet, Jaclyn MacAdam's Grade 7 class at Nasivvik School is excited about the project, and have started writing their script. Contest organizers recommend a testimonial-style ad, but, like Copp's class, MacAdam's class is going for a creative treatment.

"I let my students come up with the idea they would like to do, and they chose to create a fictional story about kids their age that smoke," she said. "So far it's good. We went ahead to work on our script so that we're prepared when it does come to start filming."

Students across Nunavut seem to be excited about the project, as Nunavut classrooms have the most registrations to date, Kronstal said.

"Even in a place with very limited bandwidth," she said, "you can get this iPod and make a short PSA and edit it on the unit. You can take the footage, edit it down, add music and all that stuff. It's pretty neat."

Copp agrees, and looks forward to seeing the results.

"I think it will build their confidence and get them excited about having a finished product they can show," she said.

For MacAdam, it's important to get a message out to the potential smokers when they are most vulnerable to the addiction.

"A large segment of the population here smokes, and that includes teenagers," MacAdam said. "The earlier you learn this information, the more chance it has to have an impact."

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