May 19,2009
National Grid’s popular Floe Web Site is going social and going to school, adding features allowing visitors to join with friends, co-workers, classmates and others within the community to participate in Floe activities as a single group and put their combined power of action to work to create a cleaner, more sustainable environment.
For educators, National Grid also has posted new classroom lesson plans on the Floe site. The lesson plans, developed through a collaborative educational partnership with a panel of teachers, are a resource for elementary school classrooms to use to increase students’ knowledge of math, science and human impact on climate change. There is no cost to download and use the lesson plans, which can serve as a great resource for teachers as they head into summer break and begin planning their curriculums for the fall.
“When National Grid asked me to design lesson plans around interactive activities with the polar bears on the Floe website, I thought it was a refreshing new tool to teach children about our Earth and how we can all help to preserve it,” said Chris Larson, a Massachusetts teacher and co-author of the Floe lesson plans. “I’m always looking for innovative resources to help engage my students around important topics. This was a perfect way to teach kids about empowerment and the environment and let them have some fun in the process.”
Floe joined the National Grid website in 2008 to encourage people to use the power of action to reduce their carbon footprint and overall impact on the environment. The interactive site helps people of all ages from all over the world analyze, measure and reduce the environmental effects of their routine daily activities, including eating and drinking, driving, using energy and making home heating energy choices. To date more than 26,500 people have accessed the site and pledged to make changes that will save the equivalent of 64,252,316 pounds of carbon.
A commitment to safeguard the environment for future generations is part of National Grid’s vision, and providing a fun, educational and free resource to help teach children about using the power of action to reduce climate change is one way the company delivers on that promise.
The Floe lesson plans are offered at two levels; those for grades one through three and those for grades four through six. For more information and to access classroom lesson plans please visit: http://www.nationalgridfloe.com/popups/school/lesson_plans.html.
National Grid is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world. We deliver electricity and gas efficiently, reliably and safely to millions of people across Great Britain and the northeastern U.S., investing continually in our networks to provide the unparalleled service that is vital to our customers and communities. Our talented, diverse workforce is committed to tackling climate change and safeguarding our global environment for future generations, and we believe this can best be accomplished by engaging our customers, communities, governments, employees and others to join us in using the power of action to achieve significant results together.
In the U.S., National Grid delivers electricity and natural gas to approximately 3.3 million customers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island, and manages the electricity network on Long Island under an agreement with the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA). It is the largest distributor of natural gas in the northeastern U.S., serving approximately 3.4 million customers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island. National Grid also owns over 4,000 megawatts of contracted electricity generation that provides power to over one million LIPA customers.