Energy Projects - Castle Park School Dalkey

Students in Form VIP class of Castle Park School in Dalkey have been busy working on an energy awareness project. Most of their research was conducted using www.seai.ie and they have been heavily involved in conducting activities and sharing their knowledge. The class have sent in the images and text below to share their experiences working on this project.

"Before we started this project, we didn’t know much about energy and its sources. We used a webquest to research more about renewable and non-renewable energy. We created a thinking map about our quest areas: four renewable energies: wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower and four non-renewable energies: nuclear, coal, gas and petroleum. Then we wrote a paragraph explaining what each energy form was, where it got its power and what the advantages and disadvantages are. We were amazed at what we discovered. There is so much energy to be obtained from natural and renewable sources! Why aren't we using them more and more? Also, there is so much energy wasted."

"A guest speaker come to enhance our understanding of how energy is used in our housing and how Irish people are becoming more energy aware when they are building their houses. He showed us the website www.seai.ie and we discovered that we could learn so much more from this site. It is written in such a way that we could easily understand. The Energy Guzzler taught us some top energy saving tips and when the guest speaker asked us to look at the back of an ESB bill, we were so shocked at how much of our energy comes from high percentages of non-renewable energy. Have you ever looked at the back of yours?"

"We did some activities that we found on the SEAI website, such as building a balloon buggy, creating an elastic band fan and building a windmill. We shared these activities with parents and had a lot of fun explaining our new and improved understanding of energy. Now we think and feel differently about energy and we try, in our small way, to save energy and help others to become energy aware!"