Forty teachers from all over Costa Rica gathered earlier this month to attend a wind-energy education workshop at the private Blue Valley School in the western San José suburb of Escazú.
The workshop was taught by the U.S.-based WindWise Education group with the purpose of introducing teachers to the science and engineering of wind energy, and to share ideas and lesson plans on how to teach wind-energy concepts in classrooms.
“It’s not advocacy. It’s about answering questions from a science prospective,” said Christine Denny, one of the WindWise employees who led the workshop.
WindWise Education aims to make wind energy an integral part of schools’ science curricula by training teachers and providing online resources.
The Blue Valley workshop included informational materials about wind energy, a guest lecture by Carlos Walker of Mesoamerica Energy and several hands-on activities. At the end of the day, each teacher left with his or her own electricity-generating turbine and predesigned wind-energy lessons for the classroom.
The workshop was sponsored by Mesoamerica Energy, a renewable-energy company that owns Plantas Eólicas, a 23-megawatt wind-energy project in Tilarán, near Lake Arenal in north-central Costa Rica. Aside from providing energy to the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) and other companies in Costa Rica, Mesoamerica Energy seeks to educate the public about wind energy through activities like the Blue Valley workshop.
“We want to excite the next generation into developing these kinds of projects in the future,” said Mesoamerica Energy employee Alana Paul.
Free wind-energy lessons for teachers can be found online at WindWise Education’s website, www.windwiseeducation.org. For more on Mesoamerica Energy, visit www.mesoamericaenergy.com.
