Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Innovative University-School Partnerships for Renewable Energy Projects and Education
EPA Grant Number: SU834727Title: Innovative University-School Partnerships for Renewable Energy Projects and Education
Investigators: Jacobson, Mark Z. , Sumers, Ben , Scalmanini, Annie , Nader, Sandy
Institution: Stanford University
EPA Project Officer: Page, Angela
Phase: I
Project Period: August 15, 2010 through August 14, 2011
Project Amount: $10,000
RFA: P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet (2010) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Pollution Prevention/Sustainable Development , P3 Challenge Area - Air Quality , P3 Awards , Sustainable and Healthy Communities
Objective:
We set out to teach a new generation of students about the fundamentals of global warming and renewable energy. We found that standard outreach approaches require time, money and flexibility that most teachers do not have.
In response, we designed a new way to introduce renewable energy in K-12 classrooms. Rather than writing how-to guides or curriculum tools, we prefabricated lab kits (see Figure 1) that teach California Science Standards with themes of renewable energy.
Figure 1: Completed “Tape & Scissors” Lab Kit (Make Your Own Wind Turbine Lab), P3 Project Phase I
We named our project “Tape and Scissors” because the teachers need only tape and scissors in their classroom to make the labs work (see Figure 2). Tape & Scissors labs are inexpensive and teach national and state Science Standards that teachers need to cover in class anyway. We have received outstanding feedback from both high and lowachieving school districts and hope that these kits serve as a model for including renewable energy themes and hands-on science activities in schools throughout California.
Figure 2: Tape & Scissors Logo, P3 Project Phase I
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
We found that the current approaches to teaching renewable energy will not reach the majority of students in the United States. These programs have the same approach as most science enrichment programs - lesson plans or programs that require additional work by teachers and additional funding from schools. Low-income and low-achieving schools, however, do not have the resources to adopt those kinds of programs. This means that renewable energy education will reach a small portion of the population that is already aware of the problem and its solutions.
Nonetheless, we found that we can bring renewable energy education to lowincome and low-achieving schools by developing inexpensive lab kits that teach science standards with renewable energy themes. Using these labs, students learn basic science concepts in physics, chemistry and data management/graphing while also learning about the importance of renewable energy.
We have partnered with a low-income, low-achieving school in the Salinas Valley - Main Street Middle School in Soledad, California - to test these kits. We received outstanding feedback, examples of which can be reviewed in the Appendix. Our first three labs, covering wind energy, solar thermal energy and renewable energy systems, had students excited and questioning the physical principles behind the renewable energy systems. In particular, the teachers at our partner middle school liked the prefabricated kits, which saved them significant amounts of extra time investment. The science teachers in the challenging Soledad Middle School setting asked us to return with more kits.
The kits we have tested to-date are made of inexpensive tools and are at best a simulacrum of real renewable energy systems. To develop higher end kits that will appeal to high schools, we have partnered with a local start-up called the Silicon Valley Energy Lab. The start-up has technical expertise that allows us to create more complex and challenging kits.
Last, we have created a website which sells the middle school kits to teachers. The site will go online on April 10 and we hope that sales will soon begin. We believe that these kits are the fastest way to introduce renewable energy to middle school science programs for three main reasons: 1) they are prefabricated, so there is no extra effort on behalf of the teacher in seeking out a class set of materials for the activity, 2) they are designed to reinforce student comprehension of a Science Standard, and 3) the material in the kits is comprised of recycled and extremely inexpensive materials.
Conclusions:
Current attempts to educate students about renewable energy and global warming are, like many supplemental education programs, targeted at high-achieving schools that have an appetite for additional curricula. While programs like science competitions can thrive with a small participating population, educational outreach will not effect behavioral change if it reaches only a small percentage of students.
To reach a broad population, we created prepackaged science lab kits that simultaneously cover renewable energy and Science Standards. Since they are pre-made, they save teachers hours of preparation. And since they cover both renewable energy and science standards, teachers can simultaneously cover renewable energy and improve their test scores.
We are not the first to consider using science labs to include renewable energy in classrooms. Others, including the National Renewable Energy Lab and the Texas State Energy Conservation Office, have attempted to reach teachers by creating lists of “how to” guides for labs.# We found, however, that teachers do not have time to collect the necessary materials for their classes and test out the labs themselves.
We believe that our model – prepackaged, meticulously-designed, and carefullytested kits that teach both standard science concepts and renewable energy – will become be a self-sustaining viral phenomenon. In the hands of hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers around California and the nation, the kits will have a reach far beyond one-onone programs that exist today. Furthermore, the inexpensive and portable/lightweight nature of the kits will make them available to a wide range of school districts that would not otherwise be able to include renewable energy themes in their curricula
Supplemental Keywords:
Renewable energy, education, teachers, science labs, science activities, STEMRelevant Websites:
SILICON VALLEY ENERGY LAB Exit
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