POWER LINES
BY MAGEN HOWARD
ENERGY, EFFICIENCY, EDUCATION Be E3 Smart program helps connect co-ops with classrooms The Be E3 Smart program provides teachers with resources — such as the energy bike and Snap Circuits (opposite page) — to help them reach their students in new and different ways. Students can even get an up-close look at the Cardinal Station generating facility in Brilliant, Ohio.
T
ake a dash of youthful curiosity, combine it with inspired teachers, and add a free curriculum, and that’s a winning formula for the Be E3 Smart program. The E’s stand for energy, efficiency, and education, and the program’s goal is to help middle school teachers help their students understand the power of energy. It comes with the teacher’s curriculum from the Ohio Energy Project, a nonprofit based in Worthington, as well as energy efficiency items for students to use at home thanks to sponsorship support from 23 electric cooperatives serving Ohio. “I can’t say enough about the program and how much it’s helped us to teach, and with materials that are provided — it just makes it so much easier,” says Ellen Lynch, who teaches seventhgrade science and eighth-grade health at Seneca East Local Schools. “What is so wonderful is they provide so many hands-on materials. With each lesson, there’s at least one experiment.”
Hands-on learning Lynch, whose Be E3 Smart materials are sponsored by North Central Electric Cooperative in Attica, has 4
put a grand experiment at the center of her energy curriculum: Students are charged with creating Rube Goldberg machines, named after the man whose thousands of cartoons depicted purposefully difficult and elaborate ways of completing simple tasks. “They have to create devices or a machine, following the scientific method, and it has to have at least five energy transformations,” Lynch says — think getting a marble into a basket, or powering up a computer to play a video. “Using anything from air in a balloon to dominoes falling, they’ve been very, very creative. They’re not allowed to buy anything. They’ve really done a great job with the machines, and they’re really fun to watch.” So fun that Lynch started recording the students’ machines in action. The videos go on Seneca East’s website each year for everyone to get in on the fun.
Students become the teachers About 20 minutes farther south in North Central’s service area is Buckeye Central Middle School in New Washington, where Marianne Williamson teaches seventh- and eighth-grade science. A few years ago, six of her Be E3 Smart students became the teachers
OHIO COOPERATIVE LIVING • OCTOBER 2017
October_OCL_full issue.indd 4
9/19/17 10:24 AM