Wind-generated education

Canberra Times
Tuesday 26/9/2006, Page: 7

Although most of the children knew how their family farms worked, none of them knew how turbines on a wind farm worked - until now. For the past six months children from six NSW schools have learnt about wind power as part of a $10,000 federally funded program, building their own wind turbines, which they put to the test yesterday.

The grant allowed schools from Collector, Gunning, Windellema, Tarago, Tirana and Breadalbane to work with Questacon developing the educational science program, Wind Gusters and Waste Busters.

The children met yesterday at Gunning Shire Hall and compared their own windturbine models to see which produced the most electricity. Collector Primary School principal Lindy Ross said the program was designed to stimulate an interest in science.

"It's important for the students to learn about how fun science can be so that we can produce more scientists for the future," she said. "They are learning that there is more to science than textbooks, it's about everyday things as well."

Wind farming is not a new issue for these communities, with debate about potential wind farms in the area occurring since 2003. Questacon's Patrick Helean said it was important to simplify larger issues such as renewable energy so children also understood. "It's important for kids to realise it's OK not to know everything, but to be able to make decisions based on what they do know," he said.

Ms Ross said the program took the big issue of wind farms and let students do their own indepth research. Students experimented to see what materials would conduct the most electricity.

Breadalbane Public School students used plastic water bottles for their blades, while Collector Public School found aluminium beer cans worked best. Breadalbane kindergarten student Joshua Hannan said making the blades was the best part, but for six-year-old Olivia Hannan it was testing the turbines. Questacon is evaluating the pilot program for possible future expansion.