Connecting elementary school students to energy concepts and new technologies

Abstract

The ever increasing energy usage and depleting nonrenewable energy resources are of great concern to all nations. The staggering cost of gasoline for today's motorist underscores the tough challenges for industrialized and developing nations with a large appetite for nonrenewable energy resources. Engineers throughout the world have focused their efforts on developing environmentally friendly and energy efficient technological solutions. This paper discusses a program created to educate elementary school students on the benefits of these evolving technologies. The program results showed that connecting students to energy related issues at the early stages of their education is especially important if we want to promote the development of lifelong practices and habits for saving energy. Several concepts of energy and energy sources as well as problems related to the nonrenewable energy resources, and new technologies including fuel cells were introduced to students in a fourth grade classroom of a Hampton Public School. The project involved engineering students from Hampton University and Old Dominion University who partnered with the Hampton Public School that served as a role model to motivate elementary school students to careers in engineering. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2006.