Hipp to be Green

When you are starting to develop a project and the team is working through difficult problems, such as how to start the project in the first place, project preparation, logistics and cost, you will need encouraging people around you. One such person is Mrs. Kathie Conaway (BCS Elementary Principal).

First, we must thank Mrs. Kathie Conaway, her intelligence and professionalism is only surpassed by her love for the students. When we were thinking about the first project (Wind Turbine Project), she suggested that we apply for a Hipp Foundation Grant and provided a sample copy. Upon completion of the grant application, we asked her if she would review it and of course, see did.

Mrs. Kathy Conaway is planning to retire this December, and I know we will miss that morning smile, the impeccable suits she wears and that soothing voice saying “GOOD MORNING, GOOD MORNING .”  We will sincerely miss her and wish her all the best in her new career – RETIREMENT.

We got the idea for this year’s grant after touring Atlantic City’s wind turbines and solar farms.  If you haven’t seen them and you’re in the area, you really need to check them out.

Not only are they producing clean energy, but they’re beautiful, too.  The kids were really blown away by them (no pun intended). 

The light we saw in our students’ eyes gave us the idea to apply for a second grant doing a project with solar panels. 

As for why we keep picking “green” projects, it’s because it’s the job of engineers to solve problems and the greatest problem facing the planet today is energy.  The wind turbine project and the solar panel/greenhouse project get our students thinking about how they use energy and what we can do to reduce our energy consumption. 

I started the technology class off by giving the students an overview and course outline.  This way they can visualize an end result.  In addition to the aforementioned items, I provide a vocabulary list with instructions for the students to review for homework and I advise them that it will also be covered during the next class. 

I find it easier to provide handouts a day or so prior to the review session so the students can concentrate on what I’m saying or my demonstrations of the components of items being discussed.

During the second class we reviewed the vocabulary list and some types of solar systems (i.e., solar cars, solar hot water, passive and active heating systems).

To regress a little, I gave the students an assignment during the first class to research the pros and cons of alternative energy and we set up debate teams at that time.  I hope this will help them understand the magnitude of the energy problem and energize them when we start our design. 

Ok, so school has started and the formalities and crises are out of the way. Time to start with lessons. This is where the Solar Panel Project comes into play, which tends to be one of the toughest areas in dealing with a project. How to plan lessons so that the students learn the info they need for the solar panel project and not have it disrupt the flow of my plans. Being able to work directly with another teacher such as Wes makes it easier to plan my lessons.

What we learned from the first Hipp Grant for the Wind Turbine is that it helps if you are flexible. Some parts take longer for the students to grasp and some they may fly right through. We know that in the first few weeks of school we need to be in constant contact with one another so that I have time to –teach; re-fresh – students the concepts of perimeter, area, volume and scale drawings, in a way that it doesn’t mess up the timing of other concepts they are learning and they know it by the time they need it for the Solar Panel / Greenhouse Project.

That’s where we are at now – emailing our daily lessons to each other and talking in the hallway whenever we get a chance. More to follow as the weeks progress.

NJN and NJEA’s Classroom Close-up, NJ will air a piece they did on our wind turbines tonight at 6:30 p.m. and Saturday at 9 a.m. on NJN Public Television.  You can also check the Classroom Close-up website. 

OK – It was summertime and I was relaxed. That has to be the reason I told Wes and NJEA that I would be part of their first blog. How hard can in be? I read blogs all the time about football and baseball, and all you have to do is write down your perception of what is happening. Yeah I must have been real relaxed. Now school has started, and I don’t mean the first day or two where you assigning seats, going over the rules of the classroom, and having students fill out forms about themselves. I mean where you realize that your schedule is being changed, the computer grade book isn’t up and running yet, you had a surge in the student population and now you don’t have enough books for everyone, your master class has started, the committee one of your colleagues volunteered you for is meeting once a week and CST has a great idea that each child with a special need deserves an hour of your attention every day. All right the last part may be a bit of a stretch, but you get my drift.

Anyway my point is in spite of maybe because of, all the reasons above I find myself enjoying this. It’s definitely not because I like to write, but I think it’s because I still like learning. The Hipp grants our school received, along with this blog is presenting new opportunities, new ways to present the curriculum so hopefully more students take an interest in technology and math, or at the very least get a better understanding of math.

A lot of people have asked us about our first Hipp Grant project which focused on wind turbines.  Here’s the write-up that appeared in the September 2007 NJEA Review magazine which explains the project:

Wind Turbine Generator
Berlin Community School
Camden County
$8,600

Thanks to teachers Wesley Hill, Barbara Rote, and Dave Madden, approximately 250 students in grades six through eight will incorporate science, mathematics, and technology objectives to create power as they learn the concepts of using wind to generate electricity.

During the summer, the teachers designed instructional elements, while other key staff helped ensure that technology, science, and math literacy elements were addressed.  The students will be introduced to those project elements through daily instruction.  By January 2008, students will take a field trip to the 7.5 megawatt (MW) Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm in Atlantic City.

Students in science classes will design demonstrational wind power turbines and weather vanes.  Math classes will complete graphs from data provided by the science classes.  Technology classes will complete a construction site survey and build the wind turbine generator.

Over the course of the project, students will design, construct, estimate construction costs, analyze project risk, and evaluate the cost savings of a wind turbine.  The goal is to create a turbine that turns as fast as possible when exposed to a wind source for a specific period of time.  The plan is to provide supplemental electricity back to the electrical grid, saving the school district on operating costs. 

We’re gearing up for the beginning of a new school year by setting up our classrooms, organizing our materials, and preparing to implement our new solar panel project. 

Our project this year will incorporate solar panels into a greenhouse project that a language arts teacher at our school has started.  The solar panels will provide energy to power lighting and heating for greenhouse experiments.  As a whole, the greenhouse/solar panel project will provide students with an outdoor facility for the kids to do tests and calculations for math and data analysis.

The students are going to do a lot of the work themselves, so we have to get them up to speed on the math concepts behind the project quickly.  Once they are able to do so, they will calculate the energy load for the greenhouses, which will determine the size and quantity of the solar panels we will acquire. 

It’s an ambitious project for our students who are, after all, middle school students.  But having the goal of the project ahead of them will be a great motivator.

Welcome to Wesley and Dave’s blog, Hipp To Be Green, which will chronicle our experience working through our NJEA Hipp Grant project, “Solar Environmental Lab.” 

This blog will hopefully help people find and write their own grants, give insights into ways to go about it, advise about things to avoid, and provide an ongoing update on our projects.

We’ll share ideas and best practices we developed after our project last year on wind turbines which we successfully completed in May 2008.  We’re still working on expanding that project and using the information we collected.

But we’re not just grant writers, we are teachers trying to juggle the demands of curriculum standards, classroom management, motivating students, and the project.

Keep reading our blog to learn from our mistakes and our successes.