Stop Electricity Waste!
| Time per session | 30 minutes per meeting (+ frequent work from home) |
| How often | Meeting held once a month |
| Activity Duration | 8 months (11/09/2016 Start) |
| Reflections |
Once a month |
Activity Short Description:
The students will analyze the power consumption of the school per month and will come up with solutions to reduce the consumption. At the end of the project, the power consumption at the beginning and at the end will be compared.
Personal Goal for the Activity:
With this project, I will try to decrease the average monthly use of electricity of our school. By creating a plan and completing it, we can raise awareness of the issue and potentially decrease the waste of electricity in our school. Monthly electricity bills will be gathered in order to know wether our project became a success or not.
Anticipated Learning Outcomes:
3. Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience:
This is a project that has never been done in our school, and we are initiating and planning it by ourselves.
6. Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance:
Electricity waste is a very important global issue. Most of the time, electricity is generated by the burning of fossil fuels. These fossil fuels emit CO2 and other types of polution that endangers our world's ecosystems. By reducing the waste of electricity, we will contribute to polluting our world less.
Appendix
WHY:
We wanted to help the world by consuming less electricity in our school. At school, we often notice there are lights that are one when no one is using them. With this project, we want to reduce the amount of electricity wasted.
HUMAN CAPITAL:
Jaime Canales and Unai Alapont are the project leaders and are both as responsible in managing the project. The school board will provide us the information needed to carry out the project, such as the electricity bills. Visual arts students will collaborate by producing the creative works of the project.
STEP BY STEP:
The project will be carried out in the American School of Bilbao from October 2016 to May 2017. Monthly meetings will be held to gather the data and to organize the future actions needed to be done. The impact of this project is targeted to an approximate of 385 students. The first thing will be gathering electricity bills, to then collaborate with visual arts students and finally gather the results and analyze them.
TIMING:
From October 2016 to May 2017. Planned meetings once a month, "emergency" meetings whenever it is needed, and constant work through Google Drive. Reflections will be written once a month. Our project will be announced on an assembly and the results of the project will also be communicated on an assembly in May.
NEEDS AND RESOURCES:
- Past electricity bills
- Collaboration with visual arts students
- Permission to talk during assemblies
Reflections
September
Jaime and I were very excited to begin this project that tries to reduce the costs of electricity in our school. We hope that after this project is completed, the use of electricity is much lower.
In order to begin with the project, we had to first analyze the electricity bills from the last course. As that information is not publicly accessible, we had to manage our way through the administration of the school. We first talked to the school's director (who is also my math teacher), who directed us to the IT correspondant, who directed us to the school's secretary, Arantza. We want to thank Arantza for the kindness and for the patience while providing us with the bills.
Apart from this, on this month's meeting, we decided to graphically re`present the use of electricity and to analyze the data. We ended up with the conclusion that the school, being so small, consumed a lot of electricity. We also began to notice that teacher and students do not turn off lights, computers, and projects. There is space for improvement, and we are eager to begin to take action to solve this global issue.
October
On the first week of October, we got the electricity bill for September of ths school year. Jaime and I were shocked by the fact that the electricity bill from last year to this year (as seen on the image) has increased in a 186%. This fact is alarming as the school has used more that two times more electricity than last year. Jaime and I have began to think about possible solutions to the problem and have already asked the Visual Arts students fo their help in making the creative works. The most obvious ways to solve the problems is by making people be aware, and by truning of the lights, computers, and projectors when not in use. I feel like we have a lot to work on and we need to act as soon as possible to not repeat the same "September Dilema" once again.
November
On this month's meeting, Jaime and I wanted to talk about ways to decrease the electricity usage in the school; but before that, we were informed about the electricity usage of October. We found the following very strange: The school paid 4,996.30 euros in September and paid 2963.27 euros in October. We find that to be weird because have not acted yet, and the school has decreased the bill. Nevermind, this is not an issue related to us, so we prefer not to get involved. At the end of the meeting, we though the best things to do would be: paste signs next to light switches, projectors, and computers reminding people to turn them off. In addition, we also thought of putting a background image in every school computers reminding to turn off the computer when not in use. We think these ideas can turn out to be successful and that can help us achieve our goal of decreasing the electricity costs in our school.
December
This month, Jaime and I were very busy with our regular classes, and apart from this, there were only 12 days of school in the month. Nevertheless, we did meet in the last week of December, right before the Christmas break.
Our goal for this month was to plan the entire action of trying to save the electricity in our school. With action, I mean to come with finalized ideas on how to design both the poster for the switches and the background images. After giving it some thought, we thought the best way to create the posters would be through Google Draw. In order to do this, first, we had to measure the dimensions of the school's switches. The vast majority of them measure 8.5x8.5 centimeters. For other switches that measure more than that, we will paste the poster next to the switches. Finally for the background image, we will use a website called canva.com.
The electricity bill for November is...
For next month, we have thought that we will create the designs and that we will install the posters and desktop background image; apart from analyzing December's bill, as always.
January
This month, Jaime and I have greatly improved in our project. The main thing we were going to do was to finally install the posters. First, however, we had to find or create designs suitable to inform the people in the school to turn off the respective electronic apparatus. After some time researching, we thought the best way would be not to create a design of our own since we are not good enough at drawing. Another problem we had was that the Visual Arts student finally did not want to collaborate, mainly due to their busy schedule. As a result, we found some designs in the Internet that were perfect for the job.
At the end of the month, we printed about 25 posters each for the switches, computers, and projectors (a total of 75 posters). Right after printing, we took a good amount of cello tape and pasted the posters in the most influential spots of the school.
Apart from pasting the posters, we had planed to install the background image on all of the school's computers. This, however, was a problem, and we could not manage to install the image in all the computers simultaneous. We will work on that next month.
Finally, we analyzed the electricity bill for December. The school payed in electricity 2,600.06 Euros. This is a substantial decrease from last year's December, meaning that our word has been spreaded in the school.
February
This month has mainly served up to check on the maintainances and problems of the project. As mentioned in the previous month, we had problems installing a desktop background image in all ogf the school's computers simultaneously.
In order to solve the problem as soon as possible, Jaime and I thought the best thing to do would be to arrange a meeting with the school's IT coordinator. As planned, we have planned a meeting with him that will take in the second week of March. This is a bit too late for us, but we think it is the best thing to do in order to carry out the project desireably.
Apart from solving this issue, we have made a check for the maintainace of the posters. After looking at all of them, we have realized that there will be no problem with the cello tape itself, but with student ripping out the posters. This problem is quite fustrating as we personally cannot do much about it. We will try to solve this for the next month.
March
This month, Jaime and I have focused on repairing the posters and trying to prevent the same thing from happening again. First of all, Jaime and I had to print around 8 new posters. This was a slump in our project since we first printed the posters in a store but was not convenient to print just 8 posters in the store. As a result, Jaime ended up printing them at his home.
In order to solve the poster ripping problem, we contacted the school office to know if anyone came to the school after classroom hours, since we did not notice or think anyone in our school community would break apart the poster that directly help them. Apparently, some kids from the foreign language program come after school, so we decided to talk to EFL teachers about the issue. We told the teacher to communicate the issue to the students, and in the last two weeks, no posters have been ripped off.
April
This month, Jaime and I did not have too much work to do except for checking on the development of our project and analyze some results. For the moment, our project is doing fantastic in terms of electricity saved compared to last year, specially this month. This April, we have cut our electrivity costs to 1/3 of tlast year, which is a great feat Jaime and I are really proud of.
We are now looking forward to start organizing an event for communicating our results to the school community. I am very excited for and I hope the presentation will be soon.
May
This month, apart from the usual checking of our project, we began to talk to the director about when we could present our project to the school in an assembly. Unfortunately, all highschool assemblies from now on are packed with events from other clubs and activities, so we have no other choice but to present it once we come back from summer holidays.
September
This is the last month Jaime and I will be working n our project, which has brought us great satisfaction in the first year of our CAS journey. We have learned that through hard work and collaboration, changes that improve our school community can be made.
And that is exactly what we tried to communicate in an assembly presentation. We communicated our results and our learnings to the school community and incites younger generations to continue with this project of both community and global importance.
Final Reflection (IPARD - 5 stages)
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Investigation:
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In order to begin with our project, we first had to identify to what extent our school wasted electricity. To do so, we first began to take a closer look at the student and staff behaviour with the use of electronics and switching off of lights. We found out that there was very little conscience on saving electricity, and given the huge global significance of this issue, we decided to begin taking action right away.
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Planning and Preparation:
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After analyzing how the school could potentially reduce its electricity consumption, Jaime and I began to plan our next actions. We thought that the best way to create awareness on the issue would be through word of mouth and through posters. In addition, we thought that in order to test the effectiveness of our project, we should compare this year’s electricity bills with last year’s ones. To do so, we asked permissions for the school to let us see last year’s electricity bills as well as this year’s monthly bills. J
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Action:
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After having planned and prepared our project, we began to raise awareness of the issue in school. Jaime and I printed out hundreds of posters to be pasted in all of the school’s classrooms. There were three posters, one for reminding the teachers of shutting down the computer, another one for the projector, and the last one for the lights. While installing the posters, which was usually done during class time in purpose, we communicated our project’s goal to the students and teachers in the respective classroom. After pasting the posters, we would monthly review the electricity bills and draw conclusions.
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Reflection:
Each month, Jaime and I would sit down to evaluate the results from the electricity bills. We would reflect on how certain factors, including the awareness of our posters, affected the used electricity compared to last year. At the end of the project, we concluded that we have had an obvious impact on the electricity use of our school, as shown by the results obtained. However, some things could be changed, like creating more eye-catching posters that would make the little kids even more aware.
Demonstration:
In order to show the school community of our results from the project, Jaime and I held a presentation during an assembly in front of all highschool students. We created a short 15 minute presentation where we communicated our initial goals, the process of our actions, and the results obtained. At the end of the presentation, we also offered our fellow schoolmates to continue with this project of global significance after we graduate.
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