About the project
Project Overview
Essential Question
How can we use green technologies to reduce San Diego High School’s carbon footprint?
Content Areas
General Description
With San Diego Unified as a potential client, students will be inspired by professional stadium innovations to design an eco-friendly addition to or renovation of Balboa Stadium at San Diego High School. The project will launch with a field trip (virtual this year) to Petco Park, where students will see eco-friendly stadium innovations firsthand. Students will also conduct research on other green stadiums around the world, choosing an arena that interests them to take note of innovations they would like to apply in their design. In preparation for designing a solution for their assigned section of the stadium, students will study concepts of energy, clean energy sources, and human impacts on climate change in chemistry, design software skills in their CTE engineering course, persuasive writing and speaking in English, and in World History they will develop their research, analytical and critical thinking skills, reflect on their learning experience, and collaborate with their project teams. To come up with a unique design solution that meets industry standards, students will partner with and learn from industry experts in landscaping and green design, as well as have assigned mentors from the City of San Diego and Balboa Park. The culminating event of the project is for students to deliver their project pitch to a panel of teachers, industry partners, and their mentors. The top-scoring teams will get to present their designs to the client and one design will be chosen for implementation the following year.
Transfer Skill Objectives
By the end of the project, students will be able to:
Create technical drawings
Design 3D modeling projects
Generate a proposal backed with evidence
Confidently present project pitch to a panel of industry partners
Create and manage a digital portfolio
Project Impetus
As the rest of the SDHS Complex campus anticipates a modern renovation over the course of the next few years, Balboa Stadium will remain in the same state it has been in for decades. That is, until the students of the GeoTech Academy step in.
Students will study the beautiful and renowned history of the stadium, analyzing historic photos, narratives of events that have taken place there, and technical drawings that other groups have proposed for the site. Taking this history into consideration, student teams will take on the task of planning and designing not only eye-appealing updates, but also changes to the stadium that will bring the site up to modern-day environmental standards.
In project phases that will take place over the next four years, each new class of GeoTech 10th graders will have the opportunity to take on their own section of the stadium, whether it is building an irrigation system for a native plant sanctuary on the stadium's north side, updating the concessions buildings with renewable energy systems, or rebuilding historic elements of Balboa Stadium, such as the columns that used to stand on the south side.