Robin Garcia's fourth-graders are learning that little changes can make a big difference. And they have the numbers to back it up. On a gray Thursday morning, they gathered in the computer lab at Albuquerque's Bandelier Elementary School, patiently typing numbers into a rapidly growing database.

Kilowatt hours of electricity consumption? Check.

Therms of natural gas? Check.

Since August, the students have been building a computer arsenal of data on their own home energy consumption, along with a group of "buddies" from the neighborhood who have agreed to share information from their utility bills.

They have also learned about easy things you can do to save energy around the house, things like turning off "vampires" -- those silent electricity consumers like television sets that suck up energy whether you're using them or not.

And refrigerator coils. All that dust that collects on them drives up your electric bill by making the fridge less efficient.

"How many of you have cleaned your refrigerator coils?" asks Angela Sylvestre, a volunteer helping with the energy-saving project.

Every hand in the room goes up, accompanied by a chorus of "I have!" and one crisp additional detail: "It's disgusting."

Sylvestre is the spark plug behind Bandelier Elementary's "GetPluggedIn: Students Powered Up to Save Energy," which is using a $5,000 grant from energy giant BP along with a whole lot of volunteer energy to try to teach a mix of energy conservation and practical math.

Four classes of fourth-graders are participating. They have heard a talk by former Sandia Labs scientist and energy conservation expert Al Zelicoff, who helped develp a list of easy-to-implement energy saving ideas for them to take home. Zelicoff writes the Journal's Tuesday energy tip.

"I figured if we could teach these simple principles to everyone, we could do some good things," Sylvestre said.

The grant helped fund development of a Web-based database that allows the students to compare their home-energy usage before and after taking the energysaving steps on Zelicoff's list.

The message is clearly taking hold.

Shanta Hanish-Wakeman, one of the fourth-graders, eagerly showed a visitor the keystrokes needed to put the computer she was using in energy-conservation mode.

Christopher Coss explained how his family dispatched him into the crawl space beneath the house to install the insulation. His description of the spiders he found elicited oohs and ahhs from his fellow students, along with a volunteer to join him next time he needed to venture beneath the house.

But there is more to the project than energy conservation. The work is part of the students' math curriculum, which is based on finding ways to integrate mathematics into everyday life, Garcia said in an interview.

"This dovetails so beautifully with that," she said.

(c) 2009 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

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