Digital Storytelling as Green Education

LEED practitioners, does this sound familiar? Your project team meets to identify high performance strategies and zero in on LEED compliance. The topic of innovation in design is broached. Green Education is earmarked on the scorecard as a worthwhile pursuit. Time passes. Design development flies by, construction commences. Substantial completion nears. Meanwhile, that Green Education credit on the scorecard hasn’t budged.

Innovation is not an afterthought.

The challenge with Green Education is it can end up an afterthought. The ambiguous scope of Green Education program development relegates its coordination to the side of a desk somewhere, becoming a lost opportunity.

It’s time for a new story.

I recently heard about a project where interior finishes were minimized to reduce material waste and improve indoor air quality. A year into occupancy, tenants asked when the contractor would return to finish the building interior.

Had occupants been informed, the design might have been seen, not as a deficiency, but as a point of pride.

Unsung hero stories

How many unknown triumphs are made on projects to ensure a lower-impact, higher performance building? Countless decisions are made by design teams to make a better final project. As soon as the building is handed over to occupants, however, these stories are lost.

Building profile on greenbuildingaudiotours.com

What if we could harness these stories to educate occupants on their building? These stories could turn a green education program into a powerful tool for marketing and behavior change.

What if you could tell your building’s story, inspire occupants and save that Green Education innovation credit from the side of the desk?

That is the experience we aim to provide at Green Building Audio Tours.
We believe all buildings have a story to tell. We want to cast these stories far and wide in a way that satisfies Green Education credit requirements.

How do we do it?

We interview team members to cut an audio ‘tour’ then give it a phone number for visitors to call for free. We create a podcast and a media player to reach iPod users and encourage social media sharing. We provide your project with an online narrative highlighting the building’s features. Then we put your green building on the map with our free green building app. Publishing your building’s story on these multiple platforms makes your green education program easier to access and more engaging.

Green Education brush up

Let’s quickly review the Green Education requirements for a LEED innovation credit, shall we? A program must include two of the four elements listed below. One of these must be actively instructional, that is, in a way encourages action from the user:

Signage
Case study
Education program
Use of electronic media

Using Green Building Audio Tours to meet Green Education requirements? Done.

The Green Building Audio Tours package meets the actively instructional requirements of Education program (3) via our on-site audio tour, while the online case study satisfies the passively instructional requirements of case study (2) as well as the use of electronic media (4). Easy right? (You’re welcome.)

We’re excited to promote the stories of green buildings here on Insight. Stay tuned for our future blog posts featuring your projects stories.