Wiki update

Go check out the wikipage for new info on the SLA building. Robert and I counted all the lights and windows in the building so we have that info for our energy audit.

New Year New Chapter

So a little late, but better late than never right? As the new school year starts it has stirred up new excitement for this project. First off we have a new member of our crew! Robert Yemola has joined us this year. Last year he was working with a company called SmartPower and this year he is bringing his expertise to us. I will post the link here to his blog when he sets one up.

So an update to the project. In some ways we are in the same place we were at the end of last year and in other ways we have moved far beyond that. We are in the same place because we still do not have a carbon footprint or energy usage of the building. HOWEVER after a TON of searching and asking the experts we have found someone to help us out. His name is Jason and he works for Green Dinosaur which is a company that creates buildings that are low on energy consumption. Jason is going to help Robert and I to create a model of our school building through this program which will give us the energy consumption of the building. So soon we should have an energy audit completed. Also this summer as i was traveling around i saw and observed many windmills (there are a lot in Scandinavia!) I had no idea there were so many different designs. Some had really long skinny blades and others had short fat blades. I'm hoping to get the chance to look into why there are different shapes and when to use the different types. Also this summer I picked up many books of ways to green the office or to teach kids about global warming and how to live green. They were very interesting books and I will add the titles to the wikispace shortly.
That is where we are at the moment. Hopefully the ball will really start rolling shortly when we have the energy audit done.

End of Year Reflection

As a repeat of what my project is; the goal of the project is to learn more about sustainability, green design, and energy saves, while applying some of my new found knowledge to give back to my school and make it more "green".

What I have done so far was found an amazing mentor, Peter Brown, for this project. Than Peter and I got to work quickly to give me material and resources to start my research into this topic. One resource was going and looking at a LEED design school Peter designed in Ft. Worth TX. We have also presented at the educational conference Educon 2.0. There we talked about my project as well as how we are making long distance mentoring work. At the very end of the year I started trying to fill out a carbonfoot print calculator for my school.

I have learned many things this year during this project. Most of the year was spent making connections and really nailing down the goals that we want to achieve by the end of 3 years. However through that I have also learned about many different ways people are thinking about green design and different ways to make buildings more efficient. Have read many articles and are learning what the pros and cons are for each type of solution to the energy crisis.

I had many expectations for my ILP project. My expectations were quite big though and are only just starting to get accomplished. See my Goals and Dream Goals

My ILP I picked so that I could see if this topic of green energy and such actually interested me before going into chemical engineering in university to work on alternative energy. This project greatly connects to my learning at SLA as well. It is all about designing my own learning and our core values.

From my experience this year with my ILP i'm taking away the skills of making connections to people that could possibly help me with my project. As well as a slightly better skills of setting deadlines and monitoring myself in a big project like this one.

My advice to people who want to take on a project like this is to be open minded. You have to be willing to switch your game plan when things don't work out the way you wanted/expected them to. You also have to have a lot of self motivation and be willing to sit down and work on your own without much guidance.

Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day everyone!!!
I sadly had nothing planned for Earth Day which is a first. So like I said in my last post I'm taking it as a chance to catch up on my ILP. So a quick update:

• Finally got two resources for calculating Carbon footprints from my classmate Robbert. One is for calculating household and personal travel foot prints and the other is actually specifically for schools. Hopefully will have results from those up shortly
  
• Added a few books to the Bibliography on my wiki.
• Attempted to sign up for a Design Science Lab program this summer up in NYC with the UN, but sadly they didn't have enough people signed up so they had to cancel it. Which is a shame because it was all to do with green design and alturnate energy, exactly what I studying and extremely interested in.
  
• Still trying to sit my dad down to help me with the LEED check lists to see where SLA stands in the points.
  
• Hopping to be able to write a proposal to Philly Management soon to be able to get a dumpster put out behind SLA so we can start recycling paper.
  

That is it for now. Hopefully I will be able to be better at updating and getting things done from now on. Has been a bit of a slow point the past month or so.

TIME magazine's special environment issue

In the spirit of Earth Day I decided I was going to spend some time catching up on my reading and really working on my ILP. The first thing I picked up to read was the new issue of TIME magazine. I have to say when seeing the cover I was very excited about reading it and expected the articles to be very good. After reading it though I was not blown away as much as I thought I would be. Now maybe this is because I have read so much about our fight against Climate Change. However I felt that TIME magazine made such a big deal about this issue, changing the border color, Good Morning America talked about it, and yet the article wasn't anything special. Most of it talked about what was going on politically and on the big scale. Which yes ok that is the view that they give to everything. I guess I was just expecting them to add a little bit more so that this issue really hit home to people. It talked on and on about laws and what the government was trying to do or should do, and yet hardly anything about what we, the US, as a population can do. Not even a mention of writing to our government. And there was no statistic in it that I found really hit home, that this issue was something we need to deal with ASAP. It also went on about cap and trade for most of the article and the last part was on more research money and demanding better efficiency. I really wish they would have spent more time talking about actual fixes to our problem and less on cap and trade and offsetting. We are still polluting when we off set, we are just making ourselves feel a little better about doing so.

Update 2/27/08

So a quick update on where things are.

• still reading Ishmael, it is a tough read so i'm reading most of it so i really understand it
• Skimmed the other books i have, hopefully will have the tiles and other info about them posted on the wiki soon.
  
• Finished doing a draft of the LEED For Schools checklist will post those results on here as soon as i clear up the last few questions.
  
• Going to start working on the LEED for Existing Buildings checklist, need the big book back from dad.
  
• Going to try and check in with Robbert and Rob Fleming for some resources. Robbert has some websites he said might help me and Rob we were thinking of maybe seeing if some of his students could take on the building as a case study.
  

those are my next steps. peter is there anything i'm forgetting?

Hector Garcia middle school tour

On February 15th 2008 I got the joy of getting a tour of Dallas’ new middle school Hector P. Garcia Middle School (HGMS) by my mentor Peter Brown who actually designed it. It is a brand new LEED certified school that just opened in September 2007. Here is more info about the actual project.

The purpose of my visit to the middle school was to learn about how Peter made it sustainable, and also about the different ways he made it both enjoyable to be in and environmentally friendly.

I was in awe during the whole tour! When we first drove up to the school I couldn’t believe it was actually it. It was huge! We parked the car and met up with Peter. Throughout the whole tour I was just amazed. The building in some ways looked and felt just like SLA; Colorful, bright, and culture-oriented. However there were so many ways in which the two schools are totally different. First off the size, HGMS is huge, four blocks, and a brand new building. SLA is less than a city block, and the building existed before it was our school. Because of these two big differences there are a lot of things that Peter did to make HGMS sustainable that I could never do for SLA. However, I still learned a ton from the tour about architecture/design in general and sustainability. Peter shared with me why he made curtain decisions on what was more important and how he had to really watch the budget of the project. I also got to see how he dealt with different issues like sunlight and lights. Almost every room in HGMS had huge windows to let in as much light as possible. Then in rooms that didn’t have windows Peter made sure they could control the lights, either with a light switch or a monitor that automatically turned the lights off after a certain time were there is no motion. Also, I slowly started picking out items he used to get LEED points for certification, as I had just filled out the LEED For Schools Checklist on the plane for SLA (we didn’t do so well). However, some of the points SLA could get, like adding a bike rack somewhere.

Overall though, this visit was amazing! It truly opened my eyes up to how great school buildings can be, that they don’t have to look like prisons (like many of the Philadelphia schools do). And I think that is truly important—having a nice, friendly building to learn in. The fact that the building is sustainable also adds on the health benefits, which makes the space even more enjoyable to be in. Throughout the whole tour, I was truly jealous of how big a school it was and how many great facilities they have. I’m really excited to get started on implementing some similar things to make SLA even better.

Educon reflection

So after thinking about the conference for a few days a lot has been going through my mind. In some ways the whole talk is sort of a blur to me and if you asked me to tell you exactly what we talked about I wouldn't have a clue. That’s where I'm going to have to just sit down and watch it on Ustream.

First off it was great to finally meet Peter Brown in person. Along with his niece Molly Brown, and Christian Long. They are all extremely cool!

So about the talk, it brought up many very interesting topics. Peter and I presented what we were up to first and what tools we are using, then we opened it up to discussion. We talked about both mentoring across the country and Green design. It was so interesting to have a room full of adults and I was the one teaching them. That rarely happens in schools, however at SLA it does quite often. It was the first time though I really felt like a teacher. I think the main thing I brought away from this weekend was how amazing SLA really is and how hard of a job our teachers have. We always are throwing hard questions at them and they either have an answer or know where to find it, that is super hard! Everyone but especially Christian asked me some really hard questions that I had no idea how to answer fully. So over all this weekend made me see SLA in the eyes of visitors and how different we are from normal schools. To us this is our life; this is how it is every day so it is normal. To others though our school is just a dream, close to how schools should be but aren’t.

Ok so going back to my ILP. Everyone in that room really opened my eyes up to how big this project could be. My project that started with me going into Lehmann’s office one afternoon last year to say that I didn’t want to do any of the options we had for our ILP’s. That I wanted to just stay here and research sustainability and other green building ideas to try and green our school building. I never thought that I would find as an amazing mentor that I have and that I would have an impact on him and not just the other way round. Actually Christian pointed out that I’ve actually had an impact on many people, and that my project could get pretty big. That actually was a shock to me I never would have thought that what I was doing was such a big thing. That people would start looking at what I was doing, me a sophomore in high school. And that if I was smart enough and made a log of what other schools could do to go green easy that it might just catch on. I couldn’t believe it but then I thought about it and that might actually seam possible. Everyone I have talked to about my project has thought it was pretty interesting. So now my job it to plow full steam ahead and get stuff rolling, but not too fast that I can’t manage it well.

Educon talk

Peter and I just finished our EduCon talk about my project and mentoring. Will add more when i have time to reflect

Update 1/17/08

This week I've been reading a bunch of articles. They were more related to sustainability, alturnate energy, and "Green" ideas in general than my SLA project, but good background information. One I found particularly interesting was Slate Magazine's article on the greenest tree you could plant. I found it interesting that even if you do plant a so called "green" tree that it wouldn't matter if you just let it die and rot as it would just spill all the CO2 back in the air. They suggested that no matter what tree you plant or have in your yard if you make it into furniture or building lumbar it would help greatly. So now that made me start thinking what trees are outside SLA and are they considered green?

Also this week I found a potential partner. My classmate Robert Yemola is working with a company call Smart power for his ILP. He has said that his mentor has showed interest in doing some type of program with SLA. So i'm hopping to get them on board with my project.

Last thing that happened this week was I got to talk to Peter through skype for the first time. That was a very cool experience. I haven't used skype hardly so it was my first time really getting to work with the program. I think it will probably become a bigger part of the way we communicate at some point. We talked more about what our plan was for the Educon 2.0 conference though.

looking ahead a little bit; I really want to try and get a few more resources read and added to the wiki. I really want to start posting on here more as I really want this to become my journal for this project and a nice way to keep a record of what we are doing. I also would really like to start doing some tests on SLA to try and figure out what our carbon foot print is now so i can start getting an idea of which parts of the school i should be focusing on first.

update 1/10

Well Happy New Year everyone!!!

So an update on my project. Sadly not much has been going on.

1. Peter has added quite a bit of info to our wiki, which i have been reading and learning a lot from.
   
2. We are also trying to get ready for our part of the Educon 2.0 conference that is being held at SLA in a couple of weeks.
3. I'm still reading Ishmale. It is a much harder read than i thought it was going to be, but i'm learning a lot from it.
4. I'm also waiting for my other mentor Rob Fleming to send me the files for a carbon test that i can run to find the carbon foot print of SLA.
5. Also i found a company that could start taking our paper so i have to write a proposal so we can get the dumpster for that.
   

Hopefully some of these things will get done soon!