Last week, the Coastal Electric Cooperative Foundation brought big smiles and even bigger surprises to classrooms across Bryan, Liberty, and McIntosh counties, awarding over $40,000 in Bright Ideas Education Grants to local teachers.
Thanks to co-op members who allow their electric bills to be rounded up to the next whole dollar as part of Operation Round Up and donated to the Foundation, these grants turn innovative teaching ideas into reality — like smart gardening, handson healthcare learning, and real-world science projects.
Since 2002, the Coastal Electric Cooperative Foundation has awarded around half a million dollars through the Bright Ideas program, empowering educators to bring creativity to life in their classrooms.
Liberty County Bright Ideas Education Grant awards: Taylors Creek Elementary School “Garden Bytes: A Smarter Way to Grow” By Tiffany Leon-Peterson $1,078.45 - Students will program and grow plants in a smart garden system.
- Students will learn about this alternative method of gardening by collecting data from sensors and programming irrigation and lighting to promote the growth of plants in the garden.
“Kinder-Garden” By Tasha Spears $1,976.89 - Students will use stations to learn about the life cycle of plants.
- Students will plant seeds, observe life cycles, measure plant growth, maintain garden journals and use recyclables to design tools and greenhouses to benefit the plants.
Bradwell Institute
“Strides for Innovation” By Jeremy Meadows $2,000 - Students will work in teams to program a quadruped robot to move, run obstacle navigation drills and explore using its sensors.
- Students will learn to code autonomous behaviors, analyze real-world motion and apply scientific concepts such as force, energy and Newton’s Laws, deepening their understanding of both physics and computational logic.
Liberty Elementary School “Young Coastal Ornithologists” By Jennifer Brant $1,465.51 - Students will learn to identify local bird species, document their findings and contribute data to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird citizen science platform.
- Students will create original field journals, bird fact cards, signage and a student-published guide to birds of Coastal Georgia. The project will culminate in a community event where students share their findings and conservation messages.
“Lighting Up Learning” By Keva Wallace $1,649.82 - Students will create simple electric paper circuit greeting cards.
- Students will learn the fundamentals of electricity through conductive tape, conductive thread, through-hole LEDs and launchpad LEDs as they explore insulators and conductors.
Liberty College & Career Academy “PressurED: Mastering Cuffs and Confidence” By Denisia Pope $1,600.00 - Students will assess cardiovascular health using a simulation cuff.
- Students preparing for CNA and PCT certifications will be better equipped for their clinical rotations and testing, while Sports Medicine students will deepen their understanding of cardiovascular function in athletic and emergency care contexts.
“Teach & Tech Together” By Tracie Chavis $1,385.44 - Students will practice instructional skills by leading groups of elementary students through programing an artistic robot.
- High school students will take the lead in guiding elementary students and their families through the activities, modeling instructional strategies and answering questions along the way.
