Contact: Barry Scott

Tel: (209) 482-5663

Email: bscott@need.org

Teachers can access NEED curriculum online. As resources are available, teacher workshops and hands-on kits are available. Individual state curriculum correlations are available here.

Educators in Northern and Central California continue to enjoy the opportunities provided by the Pacific Gas & Electric Solar Schools Program. The PG&E Solar Schools Program, delivered in partnership with NEED, includes energy workshops for teachers, over $400,000 in school grants through the Bright Ideas Grant program, and the continued data and electricity generation from over 120 PG&E Solar Schools installations. In 2011, NEED and the University of California Berkeley received a grant from NASA to host Solar Science workshops for classroom teachers. This new workshop, hosted in partnership with the Space Science Laboratory at UC-Berkeley, brings the science of the sun together with NEED’s science of solar energy activities. The two-day workshop pilot will launch the program in June 2011 with follow-up programming throughout the year.

Urbita Elementary School

San Bernardino, CA

Project Title: Changing Life as We Know it, One Invention at a Time

Project Advisers: Andrea Schindler, Amber Ramirez

This year we focused on renewable, non-renewable, and inexhaustible resources, forms of energy, and recycling. We used the Primary Energy Flipbook to learn about the different energy forms and renewable, non-renewable, and inexhaustible resources. We made tree-maps and circle- maps to show what we learned.

Also, we learned about recycling and why it is important through the Talking Trash Flipbook. To showcase what we learned, we planned an Earth Day event that took place on April 21, 2011, the day before Earth Day. For Earth Day, the Earthsavers made ‘pledge posters’ for staff and students to sign, performed an energy chant, and demonstrated games for students to play during P.E class. They also visited classrooms to educate students about recycling.

Earthsavers also planned an inventors’ workshop, where we will be making inventions that utilize renewable resources. We built and showcased the inventions at the “Inventors Convention,” where we explained what we built and why the resource we chose is important.

Independence High School

Bakersfield, CA

Project Title: Falcon Autistic Solar Team

Project Adviser: Kevin Crosby

We have started a solar club for our higher-functioning students with Autism called F.A.S.T. (Falcon Autistic Solar Team). The focus of our club is to travel to other schools around Kern County, California, and teach their students about how solar energy works. Our FAST club members peer-tutor other classes on how a solar panel takes radiant energy from the sun and converts it into electricity. This project helps to mainstream our special- needs students with their peers, as well as provide outreach and awareness about green energy and alternative forms of energy. Our club hopes to provide an open forum, through our presentations, so that students around Kern County, California will think about ways they can make a difference too.