ECOBUS is a combination mobile laboratory, museum, and library, with a primary educational focus on the environmental impacts of fuel and non-fuel mining, for elementary age students. ECOBUS contains a series of stations or displays with a variety of mining and non-point source pollution themes to be used as an educational resource for teachers and students.
ECOBUS has been designed so that classes proceed through in small groups, guided by parent and community volunteers and do hands-on activities while on board. The remaining class members conduct activities outside the bus beneath an attached awning while waiting their turn to tour the bus.
Our first stop with ECOBUS was at Adamsville Elementary School. Teachers and students took guided tours and worked on some of the hands-on activities provided. Over 250 students and teachers made the visit.
Cahaba Heights Community School was our second stop. Sue Koch and a group of parent volunteers exhibited the bus for a group of approximately 800 students. The bus remained on this site five days before continuing it's journey.
Concord Elementary with a student population of 425 became the next stop on the tour. After this three day stay, the bus was off again, this time to Greenwood Junior High School where it served a group of 300 students over a three day period.
Hueytown Elementary hosted the bus for a three day stop as over 300 additional students made their way through the displays and activity centers on board.
Next stop, Grantswood Elementary School and another group of nearly 800 students came aboard. So to date ECOBUS visited four schools and served approximately 2625 students in Jefferson County. This contact was made during the months of March and May.
Next year we implement a full year's schedule for school visitations. In addition to the school visits, ECOBUS also does field trips.
One Saturday, at an Earth Day celebration, over 200 under served kids came out to the Alabama Soil and Conservation District's picnic and river float held at the Cahaba River. Volunteers manned the bus and answered questions from the crowd.
The USX Corporation's wetland site was also a stopping point for the bus. Here we met up with EPA representatives and other environmentally concerned groups. At wetland locations the bus can provide water testing/monitoring equipment and nets for collecting specimens of macro-invertebrates in the area.
One of our sponsors invited the bus and it's team to visit The Club, a private restaurant in Birmingham. This was an opportunity to show off for the public...So we did!!
Several requests have flooded the office and arrangements have been made to serve the district in zones. This will increase the number of students interacting with the bus to nearly 30,000.
The latest grant has been submitted for support from ADEM (Alabama Department of Environmental Management) so that the ECOBUS can travel outside Jefferson County and serve the needs of other counties across the state. Training will take place so that driver/trainers can accompany the bus to its various locations.
The bus was presented at the ASTA (Alabama Science Teachers Association) Conference in September of 95. This meeting allowed access to teachers from across the entire state. The normal attendance at ASTA is over 5000.
Just completed was a visit to the ATCE (Alabama Technology Conference for Education) conference to be held in October of 95. This will allow ECOBUS to show off it's technological side to over 3000 visitors.
It looks as though the ECOBUS will be visiting many ÒSpecial Places in the upcoming year.