Exciting educational material on sustainable energy technologies – a camp at Risø DTU for Danish upper secondary school students - and an exhibition of energy technologies at Rådhuspladsen. The Green Vision project has been developed by a group of students at DTU. The whole idea is to make upper secondary school students interested in studying to become engineers and thus taking part in solving urgent climate problems. "There are so many inventions and ideas for solutions at DTU, all you have to do is combine them and tell the outside world," says project manager Julie Nilsson who is studying biotechnology at DTU. "The climate debate should not only be about all the things we are not allowed to do and what should be done differently, etc. We would like to point out that technology presents us with many opportunities to address these problems and by choosing to become engineers the young people can take an active part in improving our climate."
The Green Vision project stems from an initiative called Biotech Academy preparing educational material for upper secondary schools and HTX on current topics within biotechnological research. During the past year Julie and other students have worked to develop the concept of Green Vision and to seek sponsors for their ideas.
Green Vision Camp at Risø DTU
Currently, upper secondary school students around the country are preparing projects to submit for the competition: "Young Scientists make Denmark greener." 70 of these students will be allowed to participate in a Green Vision Camp at Risø DTU during the autumn holiday 2009. Additional 5 participants will come from an innovation camp held in early February at the Science Centre in Sorø Academy.
The 75 competent and scientifically interested young people are going to work with one of the following three topics; wind energy, bioenergy or fuel cell technology. There will be lectures in the auditorium and laboratory exercises in the divisions and hopefully many interesting discussions among Risø scientists, PhD students and the young engineers-to-be.
Interdisciplinary educational material
Whereas the camp aims to give the especially competent students a great experience, the educational material has a much wider appeal. It is a "package solution" for upper secondary school teachers. Within the three topics they will receive a current text including the latest research results, which can prepare the ground for interdisciplinary collaboration, partly because it involves ethics and views of importance to society.
The package also includes suggestions for experiments to take place in the school’s laboratory and a suggestion for students for how to write a report on the subject.
Students are encouraged to write about their definition of the word 'green'.
”We are working together with Samsø Energy academy,” Julie explains, ”as they are very interested in following the thoughts of young students in Denmark. All in all we would like to promote the young people’s idealistic and creative ideas in order to make Denmark greener.”
Green Vision at Rådhuspladsen
In November just before the climate conference there will be a major exhibition at Rådhuspladsen (the town hall square) in Copenhagen. The students collaborate with the Danish Science Communication, CO2penhagen and Danish companies with the purpose of transforming the square into a big exhibition of creative and interactive presentations on renewable energy.
”We want to present technologies and research. Students and secondary school students, who have taken part in the camp, are going to present all the options. In this way we intend to show that there are many competent and innovative students in Danish upper secondary schools. And hopefully this will inspire other young people to follow in these students’ footsteps,” says Julie.
Read more about the project here (in Danish)
Contact
Julie Mahler Nilsson
E-mail: jun@bio.dtu.dk
Tel.: 2324 2824
|