KidWind Competition To Feature 100 Students

From College of the Desert: About 100 Coachella Valley middle and high school students will compete in the seventh annual KidWind Regional Competition on Saturday, Feb. 25 at Desert Hot Springs High School.

From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., the students will build and demonstrate their working wind turbine models. The projects will be judged by local industry partners and community leaders, including representatives from MSA Consulting and Riverside County EDA/Workforce.

This year’s competition is jointly sponsored by Palm Springs Unified School District, College of the Desert, Coachella Valley Economic Partnership (CVEP) Workforce Excellence, and SMaRT Education. This is the seventh annual competition organized by the partnership.

Desert Hot Springs High (65850 Pierson Blvd.) will host this year’s event, which will be facilitated by Tim Smyth and Michael Phelan.

The KidWind events in the desert region were started by the California Regional Consortium for Engineering Advances in Technical Education (CREATE) office at College of the Canyons through funding by the National Science Foundation in partnership with the CVEP Advanced Technology Industry Council.

The KidWind program helps teachers learn about wind energy technology, receive curriculum and materials for integrating wind energy instruction into their classes, and form student teams for a regional competition.

KidWind was started by sixth-grade California science teacher Michael Arquin, who was not satisfied with the products available to teach children about wind energy science. KidWind creates affordable classroom-ready materials and free downloadable print materials to support teachers and students all over the world. For those who do not have the financial ability to purchase the materials, they also offer a giveaway program.Since founding the company in 2004, Arquin has developed and is selling wind energy kits online. Visit KidWind at http://learn.kidwind.org/.

For more information about the desert’s event, contact Larry McLaughlin at COD at lmclaughlin@collegeofthedesert.edu or 760.773.2595; or Kim McNulty at CVEP at kmcnultyps@aol.com or 760.413.5990; Tim Smyth at PSUSD at tsmyth@psusd.us or 951.970.8954, or Mike Phelan at PSUSD atmphelan@psusd.us or 909.812.3692.

Image via Pixabay