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 The Big Green Bus continues its fourth annual cross-country tour, bringing the message of environmental conservation and sustainable use of fuels as well as the smell of French fries to thousands of people. The bus’s 12-student crew has a new member this year, education coordinator Elysa Corin ’08, who will add informal class-like presentations to the group’s repertoire.
“The Big Green Bus is a moving symbol of energy conservation,” says Corin, “and it draws a lot of interest. We want to move the bus’s agenda to be even more educational.”
Corin, who first came to love science at her hometown planetarium, looks forward to teaching others about the environment. She plans to keep the sessions as fun and low-key as possible and to use “clicker” response technology, much as she’s seen at Dartmouth
“My freshman year in my first physics class, Associate Professor Barrett Rogers would begin a discussion by posting a simple question to the overhead screen. The students would use their clickers to vote on an answer. Then we would explore how people answered the problem. It was a great way to get discussion going and to gauge what people knew.”
The crew has been working this spring on a presentation that they can give at various stops around the country. Corin says they hope not only to engage audiences but also to gather data on people’s knowledge and ideas about environmental conservation. The clickers will be perfect for testing audience awareness and are the same technology used by Dartmouth faculty in their classes. Turning Technologies, a new sponsor of the Big Green Bus, donated the clickers.
“The bus attracts people to it. They want to know about the solar panels on top that charge our laptops, cell phones, and even the projection system we use. They want to hear about how we use veggie oil from various restaurants to power the bus. The classes we’ll give are just one more way to share ideas and hear what they think about how they interact with the environment. And it helps us reinforce that this is a road trip with a purpose.”
- More information about the Big Green Bus can be found at www.thebiggreenbus.org/
- For faculty who want to know more about using clicker technology, contact Susan Simon, Curricular Computing.
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