KidWind Teaches Teachers on KMOT-TV North Dakota's NBC News Leader

KidWind Teaches Teachers | Video

8/6/2008

We are all familiar with wind and wind energy here in North Dakota, but not everyone understands its potential, not only exporting power, but also the need for students to work in the industry.

On August 6th at MSU, teachers became students, learning about wind energy thanks to KidWind.

"We really focus on the teachers. We get a lot of requests to come out and meet with kids, but for the 18 to 20 teachers who are in here, they are going to hit 100 kids each," says Michael Arquin of the KidWind program.

Equipped with notebooks and pens, it was time to get down to business. They made their own wind turbines and tested them out.

"Because we have this large body of teachers. Everytime I go out, I can just help them get to do something a lot more quickly than it would be. I am sure a lot of these teachers are well trained, they could figure it out on their own, but instead of trying to spend a couple of weeks trying to figure it out, we can give them a lot of ideas to teach in the classroom," says Arquin.

A former teacher himself, Arquin had to create his own curriculum to teach about wind power. In his seminars, his grown-up students spend half of the time playing with, understanding and getting a feel for how projects will work for their students. Statistics show that 80 percent of the participating teachers will implement the project in their own classrooms.

"This will stimulate kids to think about whole career fields from grade school and that is what we need because otherwise we have to import that labor, we need to teach and educate ours to work in this market," says Ted Reinert of the Dakota Resource Council.

Promoting wind power in a challenging, engaging and inspiring environment.

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