Green Energy: Powering Education from a STEM Education Methodology

摘要

With the pressing energy needs that our global population is facing, renewable energies are rapidly becoming prominent science and engineering challenges throughout the world. Where will the young scientific and engineering minds come from to meet these demands? With some creative, open-minded thinking, it could be from your very own classrooms. In the spring of 2009, the Park Forest Middle School STEM Education Team pooled its collective efforts/knowledge and prepared an educational grant to study Green Energies via a STEM Education methodology. The grant, in part, read: "Proceeding from a STEM mindset, students would utilize science and math to design and then build/test solar collectors and wind turbines at age-appropriate levels of abstraction. Students would experience firsthand their creations capturing solar radiation (the kinetic force stored in the wind), and witness it generating electrical energy.