Today we had a guest from Blue Ridge Electric Member Cooperative, Mr. Job Jacob, come to talk to the EcoRaiders about what a solar garden is. Cove Creek School is just up the road from the only solar garden in Watauga County and it is very positive that our kids get to see this move towards alternative energy in the community, on their way to school every day. We started our session on a videoconference with Jon Jacob, who was down at the solar garden. He then joined us in the classroom, in person, and talked to the students about how the solar garden was made, how it operates and challenges like the weather. The EcoRaiders had many questions (and answers!) for him. We learned that the solar garden in Watauga has 368 panels and produces an average of 100Kw a day, enough to power 15 homes. He also showed us the Sunny Portal interface he uses to monitor the PV system, and the kids answered questions about data collected. Check out the screenshot below! He also showed us the drone he uses to detect which panels are not working properly (the drone has a built-in infrared camera to detect this decrease in performance). Unfortunately, it started raining right when he was going to do a demonstration outside so we couldn't see it fly, but we hope to have Mr. Jacob again when it's sunny so he can show us. Thanks to Mr. Jacob for coming out and to Blue Ridge Electric Member Cooperative for their involvement in the community! For more information about community solar and how to subscribe for a solar panel, go to https://www.blueridgeemc.com/solar or check out Jon's video below:
Today we also want to thank Angela for bringing the snack and MsCarla and Jess for hanging out!
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It was a very reduced group this week due to the flu, but we still got quite a few things done. As usual during our winter sessions, bird feeders were topped off and we even installed a new one that was donated by Olivia's family. We also left a tray of bird seed packages for teachers to grab in the staff lounge. Several groups of EcoRaiders were tasked with writing letters to their teachers to remind them to have the class take the CCS Nature Pledge. The pledge is part of the CCS Green Seal certificate which classes earn when they have shown a commitment to learning about, and protecting the environment. Two other groups interviewed our AppState helpers: Jess and Jordan.
We had a few warm, dry days, so we went around making sure that our flowers and winter vegetables were watered and checked on our birdhouses for any signs of tenants. No signs yet. We also took out some big rocks from the garden plot, to start prepping it for Blooms & Buzz Day. To prepare for Mr. Jacob, who will be at EcoRaiders next week to talk about solar energy, we did a role play outside on the basketball court to simulate how a solar panel works. The ping pong walls are the photos, the kids electrons, see if you can figure out what else is going on! This week at EcoRaiders we were fortunate to get a visit from two Park Rangers! Amy Renfranze from the Department of Education and Natural Resources at the Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation and John McMann, Taj's dad. Amy works as a Park Ranger at Grandfather Mountain and also writes a weekly column called "Dear Naturalist" for the Mountain Times, you can read more about her story here, and about the wonder of lichens on one of her latest posts here. Amy shared with our students her passion for animals and the different ways local wildlife hibernates. Check out some clips of the kids' presentations:
While half of the group was learning about animals hibernating with Amy, the other half was practicing using compasses and tracking animals while on a scavenger hunt, assisted by Ranger Josh McMann. During this activity, the EcoRaiders' job was to follow the clues and decipher which animal scats and tracks they came across. There was a lot of excitement around this activity and some students proved to have a very keen eye for detecting the marginal differences in shape among the poops! A shout out to Viv's dad Jimmy and Reece and Sawyer's mom, Christy for getting caught up in the adventure and helping out with the identifications. The older girls in the group (Kai Plummer, Devan and Annabelle) did a wonderful job leading groups of younger kids in the scavenger hunt and we hope they will continue to take on more responsibilities in the club as they have proved to be great leaders! Check out some more pictures below.
GUEST BLOGGER: Maddie Parker (7th Grade) Today in Eco-raiders, Melissa, Bettina and Diego from Appalachian State University's Office of Sustainability recycling program came and talked with Eco-raiders about recycling. One thing they taught us is plastic’s journey from the recycling bin to becoming something brand new! First the plastic is taken from the recycling bin, after that the plastic is shredded, the shreds are cleaned and turned into resin and then from the resin something totally new is made. When you throw away plastic it goes to a trash plant and it takes 450 years to go back into the ground. That is a long time when something new could be made in a lot less time by recycling! They taught us that we can make a big impact by reducing our use of things like plastic bottles and bags. Instead you could use things like fabric reusable bags instead of plastic bags. Today we also learned that plastic is originally made from oil that comes from the fossils buried in the Earth for millions of years. When we take this oil out of the ground toxins and pollution are released into the air which is NOT good for the Earth. The Appalachian State Office of Sustainability students taught us all about the bad effects of not recycling things like plastic, batteries and aluminum cans. Did you know that by recycling one aluminum can you save as much electricity as you would use watching 3 hours of tv? Today in eco-raiders we learned so much and had a lot of fun!!!!! We also had another guest from AppState helping out today, Jess Lingle, who is a Sustainable Development student. She helped the older girls finish the bulletin board we started last week, which looks amazing! Thanks Jess.
It's 2017 and the EcoRaiders are back at it for their second season. This week we welcomed some new members and worked on a bulletin board for the school hallway. One of the main missions of the EcoRaiders is to increase environmental awareness in our school community. The bulletin board will help us keep the rest of the school informed on what we've been up to in the club and also hopefully inspire others to help us with our efforts by recycling, working on the garden, saving energy, etc. To get us get "warmed up" for this new season and remember why we're doing this, we watched two short video clips, you can watch them below.
Students also reflected on why they come to EcoRaiders. Here are some of the answers they gave: "I am in EcoRaiders because I want to protect the environment from harm." "EcoRaiders is about helping the Earth and keepin animals safe and ecoraders is working hard to keep the earth save. Also ecoraiders is learning science." "Because I want to save and help all anmoles and for fun." "I think I like the river." "I want to protect the enviroment." "I think we go to EcoRaiders to have fun and learn to not hurt the enviroment." "ecoraiders takes care of the invermint by recycling paper and cans." "ecoraiders takes care of the invermit by reciclen cans." "We need to recycle and help global warming and also because our Earth, the place that we love is becoming a giant landfill." "I like nature because you can get lost." "It sounds like fun and I like nature so I will love it." "I like EcoRaiders because siens is like my life. I love siens because you lern new thangs every day." "I like EcoRaiders because you can learn about the environment and I love our environment." "Ecoraiders is about helping the invirment. And about learning and doing scince, we need clean air!" "I am in Ecoraiders because I want to save earth's nature." "It is fun!" "It is important because we need to know how to take care of the environment." "Don't cut down the trees because we don't want to die and the trees make air. It is also because of the animals habitats." "I like taking care of animals and earth because it helps the invromont." "Ecoraiders is important to me because you learn about science and you learn how to take care of things." "The environment has cool things to learn about." "I am in ecoraiders to take care of the environment and to learn how to have a happy/ healthy lifestyle." "Because Environmental Science leads to developments in Eco-Technology and I love technology. Also, it helps us take care of our environment and that is very good." "I think it is important to take care of the environment so that less people are dying and less animals are going extinct." "I want to come because more pepele are piluting and this is way to help stop it and it sounded fun." "EcoRaiders is to help the animals and nature. I love EcoRaiders!" The EcoRaiders also replenished all bird feeders around the school and covered the winter vegetables to protect them against the frost. They seem to have survived several harsh days! Photos by Kai Plummer
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