« CLEAN Energy Workshop 2011 Discussions

Ideas for how to teach with CLEAN  

A big focus of this workshop will be for each participant to work on their own approach for how to teach energy with the CLEAN collection. We envision three ways to do this:

1. Use an existing CLEAN activity and adapt it to your classroom
2. String together multiple activities to create a module or a whole course
3. Create a new activity that could be added to the CLEAN collection.

We intend to use the period of April 13 - 17 to work on these approaches. As we plan for this work period, we would like to organize people into small groups as needed. So, use this thread to let us know what approach you would like to work on.

Please post your ideas here by Tuesday April 12, by 12:00 Central time. We will use the afternoon session to organize groups and get everyone ready to make progress during the break.

4133:14211

Share edittextuser=24 post_id=14211 initial_post_id=0 thread_id=4133

Let's glean the clean collection for the best resources for teaching about the specifics of each primary energy source and our set of technologies for utilizing them. These could be case studies of specific facilities. Here's a list of sources and technologies for starters - some with example facilities listed.

Solar - passive, active, photovoltaic, concentrating
Wind - wind turbines
Fossil - coal, oil, gas, peat, oil shale and sands (Athabasca)
Methane clathrates
Biomass - wood, sewage (Didcot, UK), algae, crops
Hydro - dams, run of the river
Nuclear - fission (Uranium, plutonium, thorium), fusion
Tidal - free-standing turbines (Roosevelt Island), barrages (La Rance)
Osmotic - selective membranes (Statkraft in Norway)
Ocean and lake thermal - OTEC (Keahole Point, Hawaii), deep water source cooling (Honolulu)
Wave - shore-based (LIMPET on Islay), floating (Pelamis off Portugal)
Geothermal - electric-generating (The Geysers), direct (Klamath Falls, Oregon)

4133:14273

Share edittextuser=1579 post_id=14273 initial_post_id=0 thread_id=4133

Hi-
I'd be interested to know if anyone is using or creating a bubble diagram like the one Nick showed. That seemed a compelling visualization to me for thinking about 2 priorities at once while getting a sense of scale of the impact. Have people tried these with other axes for other kinds of choices (what kind of car with co2 emissions and cost as axes?

4133:14274

Share edittextuser=3 post_id=14274 initial_post_id=0 thread_id=4133

Todd mentioned Gapminder.org in the chat today.
http://www.gapminder.org/
I wonder if anyone has made an activity using datasets like this that are easy to visualize and manipulate.

4133:14277

Share edittextuser=24 post_id=14277 initial_post_id=0 thread_id=4133

Join the Discussion


Log in to reply

« CLEAN Energy Workshop 2011 Discussions