Organizer

Gwen Froh gwen@marinbike.org
The Marin County Bicycle Coalition

Rethink Your Commute Challenge
Teens Go Green Club at Miller Creek Middle School, San Rafael CA.
4 weeks challenge in March-April 2011 before Spring break.

Summary
Teens Go Green, in collaboration with Save a Gallon (www.saveagallon.org) launched a pilot program at Miller Creek Middle School as part of the Teens Go Green Spring Challenge. Instead of paper raffle tickets, students registered on-line with Save a Gallon and received shoe-shaped barcode cards during science class. When students walked, biked, or carpooled to school on Challenge days, they scanned their card and automatically found out how much CO2 they saved. All participants received a morning treat and entered a raffle to win weekly prizes and the grand prize, a new iPod nano. In addition, the science class with the highest amount of Co2 saved, received cash for a party and their teacher received a gift card for book passage. With the excellent participation rate of 42.73% (239 students), during the four week challenge, Miller Creek Students saved the emission of approximately 1,071 lbs of CO2 and logged 1,104 miles.

Marketing

• We had two waves of promotion. The first one included posters announcing a teen challenge by TGG club but not giving out any other information. Just: Stay Tuned. About 5 big posters were put around the campus 2 weeks before the challenge started. The week before the challenge, the regular posters we created were put up.
• Printed posters with guidelines on the flip side were put in teachers boxes before the challenge begun.
• The Marquee Board at the entrance to the parking lot promoted the challenge all the way through the end.
• Greg (the Principal) sent various notes home via school’s publishing materials promoting the contest.
• One of the students created a human size iPod that she wore during the challenge days promoting the grand prize.
• During the registration process

Organization:

• First step: Science teachers were debriefed about the challenge and the new technology by Mike (science teacher) during a science staff meeting. All teachers agreed to participate and to promote the challenge.
• Step two: Sign up all the students in the school in the website Save A Gallon. We did it in two ways: Science teachers reserved time in the computer lab and I came in to show the teachers and students how to register. I made it into a little class and took the whole class for this. I did it one or two classes and the teacher did the rest. If the teacher didn’t have enough time to do this, I came in and did a shorter presentation and students registered at home. One of the problems with this was that many kids didn’t end up registering (many 8th graders) and there were more mistakes in the registration process when done this way.
• Step three: train club members to know how to scan barcodes and to handle crowed of students approaching the table.
• Step four: Make sure you have a table, a laptop and the scanner for every morning you do the challenge. We spoke to the custodian so the table was out every day we needed it. We used one of the science teachers lap top. We also had the computer lab open in case we needed to register kids or faced problems with registration at th beginning of the contest (which happened several times a day).

Since the contest was limited to bikers, walkers and carpoolers we did well with one scanner. But if we had large groups of kids coming at the same time, we would have needed to think for options since we wouldn’t be able to register everyone on time before school begins. We also had music and snack every morning for participating kids.

The scanning process in the mornings went overall without many problems. Students scanning had to be reminded not to scan too fast so two barcodes are being input at the same time. I also had to remind the kids to say out loud how much CO2 was being saved from the atmosphere so participating kids got a better sence of the reality of what they were doing. Not many would actually look at the screen (maybe if the screen was bigger or if the screen was more interesting with colors and images- that would attract the attention).

Prizes:
At the end of the week, club members would gather around the lap top and look at the stats. One club member would write a little blurb that would be announced before everyone. The blurb included information about the classes in 1st, 2nd and 3rd place (based on the amount of CO2 saved). Individuals were also chosen randomly (with the prize picker) to win a prize. 5 students from each grade every week and one grand prize winner at the end of the contest who won the iPod.

Potential Challenges and opportunities:

• Making sure teachers are willing to give time from their class to register students and to promote the challenge.
• Having a laptop to use during the challenge days and maybe two (or the computer lab) at the beginning of the contest for problems and new registrations.
• Having a fast internet access connection outside
• Having trained students that can make it on the mornings and an adult to supervise the equipment and the process. (especially at the beginning)
• Having music equipment. It turns the event into a party.
• Develop the registration stage into an interactive lesson for students using the Save A Gallon website.