Boltage Update

A quick note today about Boltage. Here is a link to a TV report about a California school that implemented the Boltage (formerly Freiker) program:

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=6747072

Good Stuff!!

YIPPY!!!!! Freiker Fever comes to Omaha!

It's a wonderful day here at Activate Omaha! Our dream of bringing Freiker to Omaha has finally come true, thanks to a grant from Safe Routes Nebraska!!

What is Freiker? It is short for "FREquent bIKER," and it is a cool system that tracks the number of kids that walk and ride to school, and then provides incentives to kids as they reach their walking/riding goals. The heart of the system is the Freikometer, which is a weather proof, tamper proof, solar powered scanner that reads an RFID tag that is attached to the student's backpack. The machine uploads the data wirelessly to the Freiker website, where people can get real-time results on the number of kids who have walked or biked to school. (Below: the "before and after" effect that Freiker had on an elementary school.)

Yes, it is hard to explain...and let me potentially confuse our readers even more by saying that Freiker recently re-branded itself since our grant application was written, and is now known as

"Boltage," with the Freikometer now known as the Zapper. While the program started out to encourage biking, they expanded it for walking, necessitating the name change.

At any rate, Activate Omaha staff saw this program in action during a visit to Boulder in 2008, and were amazed at what we saw at Crestview Elementary: on a chilly 38* morning, 66 kids rolled up on their bikes. Combine that with the number of kids that walked, and there was very little vehicular traffic around the school. It was incredible. Check out this time lapse slide show of Boulder's Crestview Elementary from the Boltage website to see for yourself. (Holy bike parking, Batman!)

Our funding will allow us to put this program into action at 3 Omaha schools. The search will begin immediately to find the schools that will be the best fit for this, with the plan of having it up and running for Fall 2010!

Stay tuned as we begin this awesome journey!

Westbrook Update

Yesterday's visit to Westbrook Elementary just confirms what we already knew: this school and these kids are awesome! The Dynamic Duo of Principal Cindy Vann and Teacher Leader Glen Jagels are so great to work with.

We went to the school assembly to help celebrate the 2nd Quarter awarding of the Golden Shoe Award. Westbrook offers a walking club before school in addition to encouraging kids to walk and roll to school each day. Frequent Walker cards are used to track particpation, and each fully punched card is entered into a drawing for a quarterly prize! This quarter's prize was a flag football set, which was won by Paul, a frequent walking 4th grader.

The really big prize, though, is the coveted Golden Shoe Award, which is given to the classroom with the most overall particpation. The 5th graders were sad to give it up, but they were beat out this time by the 2nd grade!

A delightful bonus from the morning was to see the presentation of nearly $1700 to a representative from the American Red Cross. The Wildcats raised this money for Haitian relief, and the leadership shown by some of the older students in the school to organize and coordinate this was very impressive.

Watch for some safety improvements coming soon to Robertson Drive in front of Westbrook as we work to get the street changed to one-way during drop off and pick up hours.

Green Wave Update

Drat! I forgot my camera yesterday while at Saddlebrook Elementary helping the 4th grade Green Wave-ers. I am so proud of them and wish I could have provided a visual of them in action!
(This old photo will have to suffice for now.)

We talked yesterday about collecting data for the school's Walk 'n Roll to school program. We showed them the "boring worksheet" version tally count system and challenged them to come up with something better (and more fun!) that kids could do themselves as they arrive in their classrooms each morning. After brainstorming what data we wanted to collect, we divided them into groups.

These kids are brilliant! The each group was given a specific grade level to design for, and within 20 minutes, we had an awesome group of pilot projects on our hands:

* The Kindergarden group decided that since little kids like animals, their tally system would involve paper fish that could be dropped into fish bowls with photos of a person walking, a bike, a bus, a car.
*The first grade group designed an awesome lego stacking system that effectively created an instant bar graph of travel modes, and even thought to include an encouragement program, giving the winning grade an opportunity to throw water balloons at the 4th graders!
* Second grade proposed a popsicle stick and recycled container method that had clear and easy instructions.
*Third grade came up with a recycled pop can and pebble idea after a very impressive team brainstorming and design session.
*The 4th Grade group also took the recycled materials approach, suggesting we use recycled milk bottle lids from the cafeteria to put in re-used boxes.

Next up: pilot each of these systems in their own classroom for a week, then evaluate the process, and then pick the top 2 to be piloted in the whole school.

Thank you again to the National Center for Safe Routes to School for giving us this opportunity!

Fullerton Fair

What a blast we had at Fullerton Magnet Elementary last night! Fullerton is a very big school, so when they do something, they do it big. The event last night was the Science Fair/Health and Wellness Fair/Waffle Man dinner. We trotted out the Bike Blender for it's first full scale maneuver. Sure, we'd tested it at the bike shop and for a small group at Saddlebrook Elementary, but this was a scale unlike we have tried before!!

Major thanks to the 156th/West Maple Hy-Vee store who generously donated the smoothie ingredients. Store Dietitian Amanda came through with a great recipe for us, and was on hand last night to hand them out to families as smoothies were blended and sampled.

Talk about "trial by fire" - last night was the first official event outing for our new and fabulous intern, Kassi. She jumped right in and did a great job!

Along with strawberry/banana smoothies, and Walk to School zipper pulls, we also had the Fullerton walking distance map on display so that kids and parents could find their house and estimate the time it would take to walk to school. This school is located right in the middle of a large subdivison with great sidewalk connections, so there is a lot of potential.

Thanks, Falcons!!