Oak Park students take Edison Challenge

ELECTRIFYING MOVES—Oak Park High School and Middle School students rise to the challenge of learning about important environmental issues such as global warming, solar energy and ocean pollution. Teams of students took part in the school's annual Edison Challenge and included the environmental studies in their everyday lesson plans. Oak Park High School and Middle School students recently put their environmental knowledge to the test.

The Edison Challenge, offered for the past three years by Southern California Edison and USC, is a competition based on the theme, "Energy and the Environment."

Teams of students and teacher advisers choose a topic and must complete five components: a science lesson plan for younger students, a research project proposal, community service, a creative presentation and a written portfolio of all the project activities. Topics include energy conservation, alternative transportation, and air and water quality.

This is the first year Oak Park has participated. Friends of Oak Park Schools, which funded the program for Oak Park students, sought an emphasis on secondary science education this year, according to Debby West, district science specialist.

"The Edison Challenge has all of the important educational components. It's standards-based, has practical applications, collaboration with industry and the university," West said. "It's really wellorganized."

Science teachers at Oak Park High and Medea Creek Middle School introduced the program to their classes. Students volunteered to participate. Three teams of six students each, with a teacher adviser and Edison mentor, formed at each school. The teams met regularly for six to eight weeks to work on their projects.

The teacher participants had the opportunity to attend four Saturday workshops presented by Edison on such topics as energy, solar wind and conservation.

Students chose topics that they were passionate about, West said.

Vivian Rotenstein, an Oak Park High freshman, and her group focused on global warming and created their own website. The group taught Oak Hills Elementary School fourthand fifthgraders about the benefits of solar energy. Students created solar cookers using pizza boxes, coming up with their own designs of providing extra insulation or reflection. Rotenstein and her team taught the younger students how to convert Celsius into Fahrenheit and how to bake a cookie in the solar ovens.

"It was really nice to be able to reach out to younger kids at the elementary school," Rotenstein said. "We had to plan the lesson and to think of interesting ways to get elementary school students to stay focused and interested."

Sam Hirsh, an Oak Park High freshman interested in marine pollution, took his group to visit an Oxnard recycling plant, which the students videotaped. The scripted video will be shown on a public access channel. For the community service component, the group organized a cleanup of Medea Creek, in which 60 students participated.

West handdelivered the written presentations to USC on Feb. 27. Judging is currently taking place, and there will be a recognition-awards ceremony at the California Science Center on March 28.

"As educators we get to be supporters of students, leading the way, supporting their interests, their acquisition of new knowledge," West said. "They are going to be our future leaders. This program gives them practice sharing their knowledge with other people."

West plans to continue the program in Oak Park next year.

"We learned a lot this year and can put things in place to make it even better and bring more people into it," West said.