Pavegen Kinetic Tiles

For my You & The World project I decided to focus on renewable energy. In my previous post I wrote about different solutions, like innovative technology, how we have to implement those solutions, and the plans and demands for change that have been made within the past few years.

An organization that stuck out to me was a company called Pavegen. They create kinetic tiles that capture the energy of footsteps when people walk on them. I briefly talked about them in my last post, saying that their tiles have lit up soccer fields and airport hallways. Although these tiles can’t make everything renewable, they are a part of the change that we are moving towards. We have to switch to renewable energy, and innovative technology is a way we can do it.

For my Agent of Change I decided I wanted to reach out to Pavegen for a possible project. I thought their technology was really cool, and wanted to see if it was possible to put these kinetic tiles in SLA. My idea was to see if we could have a hallway with these tiles for students to power the lights.

I first looked at Pavegen’s website more, and saw that they have a section for education specifically. They have put these tiles in some schools already, and have an email specifically for education enquiries. So I decided to email Pavegen about my project.

I didn’t get a response, and later saw that an automatic one had gone to my spam telling me to fill out a project enquiry on their website. So, I went to the site and filled out the enquiry. I set up a meeting with Mr. Kamal to talk about what he thought about the project as the Engineering teacher. He told me about corporate sponsors and how they could help if we had to fund the project. He helped me fill out the project inquiry, and I submitted it.

I then got an automatic response email to the project enquiry. I haven’t gotten a response back, which is okay, so I don’t have anything else I can do. But it was still interesting to learn about and reach out to a company that’s creating innovative technology for a more sustainable future. It was exciting to email a company that is creating sustainable technology. And it was fun to brainstorm about making SLA more renewable. Even though this specific project didn’t work out, I’d like to continue thinking about renewable energy, and maybe think of other ways that SLA can be more sustainable.

I liked this project a lot. Even though I wasn’t able to do a complete project, I still enjoyed learning about renewable energy, and reaching out to a company. I think I did everything I could for this specific project, I reached out to the company multiple times, and the rest was relying on their response. I could have made a back up plan, such as informing others about renewable energy, or other sustainable ideas. But I wanted to focus my work on a possible big project. My project was just an idea, and there’s a lot left to do. It made me think about making SLA a more sustainable school, and possible projects that could happen in the future. I hope that next year there can be sustainable projects, that potentially involve renewable energy, at SLA.

Here is my annotated bibliography