In the last couple of days I’ve discovered two websites designed to help people calculate motor vehicle fuel economy and fuel saving strategies. I also explored the education pages of the Environmental Protection Agency’s website. Using these three resources teachers can build a number of environmental science and some math lessons.
Fuelly, is a website where people register their vehicles and track fuel economy. Visitors to Fuelly can also look at other peoples’ vehicle’s fuel economy.
Walk Score is new website that ranks the “walkability” of 40 cities in the United States. By entering an address into the “walkability” calculator users can determine how easy or difficult it is to travel through a city without using a personal vehicle.
The Environmental Protection Agency has some great pages for teachers to use with students in all grade levels. The EPA website also has pages dedicated to independent learning activities for students. The pages for pre-K through 4th grade are especially good.
Applications for Education
Using Fuelly and Walk Score together students can evaluate the savings created by walking around down instead of driving. To make the activity more accurate teachers can have their students add in the average costs of parking fees in a city.
To help teachers keep environmental lessons relevant to where their students live, the EPA provides a search-by-zip code option which provides visitors with environmental news and data relevant to your zip code.
