05/16/08 Energy Education for the Future

Energy Education for the Future. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. Back in those good old high school days I remember sitting there wondering where I was going. I wound up a music and theatre major. Go figure. But in today's world where technology is rapidly changing the workplace landscape what more can a high schooler get? Bill Cairns is the Vice Principal for Skyline High School in Idaho Falls where they are getting ready for something completely different. CAIRNS: Lat year we embarked on a business partnership to provide an opportunity for students to have a hands on learning experience to understand some of the challenges dealing with energy and the lack of energy in the United States. The school district teamed up with Idaho National Labs, Idaho Falls Power and Wheeler Electric to get the program off the ground. CAIRNS: The first phase of that program was to install a wind turbine on our school campus so that students could actually look at wind and how much energy that might be able to generate to fulfill the never ending needs we have. The second phase was to go to the board and get approved a new curriculum. Idaho is increasing the math and science graduation requirements so this was a good time for this program to be implemented. CAIRNS: Part of that graduation requirement also is that they have a project and energy solutions provides multiple opportunities to do senior projects. We went to the board, approved a curriculum that will start next year and what it's looking at is taking the lack of energy that we have and trying to give students an opportunity to understand what that problem really is and then to explore different alternatives to come up with some solutions for the future. High school students have a way of looking at things with new eyes and will ask questions like: why not? A group of high school students was recently turned loose in an auto design group and pretty well shook up the auto design industry. CAIRNS: We know we'll be doing a unit on solar, we know we'll do a unit on wind; we'll do a unit on hydro. We're in the works of trying to do one with nuclear cell splitting. We're looking at geothermal; we're looking at bio-waste and they'll look at some political issues in there and how you work with politics to work through that They hope to soon have a solar panel in place and already the wind turbine is providing a minute offset. Something in the neighborhood of $12 a month that is helping another of their programs&a daycare. For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org