Teaching Green - Educational Kits

For my Honours Project I decided to focus on education as a scenario to work in since I intended in going into teaching. Also, with the focus on reducing energy usage and carbon emissions I tried to think of creating something which could highlight the importance of these issues but be engaging and educational at the same time.

I looked at using interesting and thought provoking shapes to see which ones could capture a school child's imagination the most effectively. To do this I collected and produced a range of different shaped and textured objects and brought them to Peterhead Academy to test out on some 1st and 2nd years.

The objects that attracted the most attention gave me a starting point to work on concepts and ideas of shapes that would attract an intrigued school child's mind.

From personal experience, research and the media of today, technology plays a huge part in young peoples lives and as a result they are a generation of energy users. So my intention was to teach children the benefit of renewable energies in an easy to understand and interesting manner. Most people can associate solar, wind and hydro energy with large scale machinery but I wanted to bring it down to a handheld scale that they can use in classrooms and see it working for themselves.

The result was a series of 3 kits demonstrating solar, wind and hydro energies. The kits are designed to show just how simple it is to generate energy from the various sources, taking them away from any notion of the larger scale commercial machines being very complicated and hard to understand!

The removable yellow block on the front of each device can be replaced with a USB or wire terminal block to be used in various applications: accompanying software can allow second by second data on the operating device through a computer or laptop and external circuits can be powered using them.

The SOLAR one use thin film solar cells which are photovoltaic and therefore do not need direct sunlight to generate power. This means torches and strong artificial light can be used in its place so as to not interupt any class plans if the weather is bad.

The WIND and HYDRO ones both use dynamo like generators. As the turbines in both rotate, it causes magnetic pulses inside the generator and creates power. Again these can be used indoors using replacement wind (hairdryers and fans for example) and the HYDRO one requires a bit of ingenuity in pumping water in and then out of the device.

These devices are aimed at 10 - 14 year olds and are intended to highlight the importance of looking to renewable energies. As adults we are set in our ways and can find it difficult to change habits, but if we learn about things we can have an effect on from a young age then in theory we should be able to carry that information forward as we grow. With these kits children can learn how simple these energies are and how they can affect our lives and hopefully share their new found knowledge with family and friends and then their own kids as they grow older.