Saturday, August 8, 2009

Free Offer For New Energy and the Environment Teaching Tool

To any school district leaders out there: this is something that could benefit your district financially and academically! Software makers Good Steward Software has created a new, free online service called GreenQuest:
GreenQuest is a personal Web-based energy dashboard that enables individuals to track the energy for their home or business for free. Teachers can use GreenQuest in the classroom and also offer it to their community, leading them to a more efficient, less costly, and cleaner future. More than 150 school districts have already signed up for FREE GreenQuest web sites.

GreenQuest includes valuable energy benchmarks, carbon footprint, weather analysis, performance charts…even a free ENERGY STAR interface for the business owners in a community! It’s an easy-to-use, informative teaching device…a FREE instructional tool with real-world application across multiple subject areas.

Since school’s out, sign up as a Basic Sponsor before August 31 and the setup fee will be waived. And, as Basic Sponsorship doesn’t cost anything—ever—so you and your community can use GreenQuest for free—forever. Get in while school and the setup fee are still out!
Click here for more about the GreenQuest School's Out promotion. There's a demo site and lots of answers to questions you might have. I'd also check out the Loudoun County (Virginia) school district's website that details everything they've been doing with GreenQuest as a catalyst.

This could help districts cut costs by finding areas of waste, and we all know our classrooms could use all the funding that would be freed up. That sort of indirect benefit is great, but it's the direct one that's even better:

Imagine a science or math teacher being able to access this online and what they could do with it in the classroom! We talk about this stuff all the time, of course, but sometimes you just gotta show your students the real-life data to really get them thinking about it.

Have you tried this software? Do you have ideas for possible uses in the classroom? If so, please share your thoughts in the comments!