We have been working hard this week to finish our manuscripts, and at the conclusion of this program, many of us hope to be published! We have continued to research, and we have been seeing results!

Click here to see this week's photos

Week 3 - Cardboard Boat Building

This week we were able to try out the engineering-redesign process for ourselves. We participated in cardboard boat races, which are something historically done at CMU during Homecoming festivities by freshmen engineering students. We were given 7 items ( ducktape and cardboard, in any ratio we choose ), and two hours to build boats that had to float about 100ft across a pond. The teams were:
Steve, Levi, and Jeff
Janet, Shawn, and Matt
Aaron, Lisa, and Andy
Sandy, Michelle, and Kasey
Ze and Jenny

Sandy, Michelle, and Kasey were successful, as well as Janet, Shawn, and Matt in reaching the other side of the pond. Here are some photos and videos from our day of fun!

Click Here to see the Photos

Click here for Week 2's Photos

 

Teaching Changed Lessons

One of the new components of our program is to have the teachers show us a lesson that they have adapted with engineering principals as a result of our work last summer. We began with Lisa showing us a discovery lesson with Fizzalicious drink tabs. Shawn then showed us a shell classification lab he adapted, and today Steve showed us a Robot Basketball Project. The following are pictures from Steve's TCL (Teaching a Changed Lesson). We have all really enjoyed seeing how the things we have learned last summer, and this summer already, can be used in our classrooms.

Pictures from Week 1

Check out what has been going on during week 1. We have had some tutorials with the NGSS, as well as some technology that will be useful in our future classrooms.
https://plus.google.com/photos/104953658096340663285/albums/5899008601969057313?authkey=CL6etdqR3OTQnQE#photos/104953658096340663285/albums/5899008601969057313?authkey=CL6etdqR3OTQnQE

Return to Mt. Pleasant

On Monday July 8th, the in-service and pre-service teachers returned to the ET building to start another summer of learning and discovery. We started right into our projects with some new twists. This year, we will be working on aligning our current content with the Next Generation Science Standards, and then spending our afternoons in labratory working on engineering projects. I will be back later with more updates on the program :)

Alma High School Activity

The pre-service teachers, Tolga, and Janis all joined Lisa and Steve at Alma High School on Friday, February 22.  The lesson today was titled 'Fruit Batteries' and we worked with a great group of students who were assigned to light as many LED lights using fruits, vegetables, and liquids (soda, bleach, and vinegar).  A challenge at first--students discovered that lining materials in series rather than parallel yielded higher voltage and therefore lit more LED's! After using as many materials as each team desired, a challenge to only use one fruit or vegetable was proposed. Student's had great ideas and discovered sectioning their fruit or vegetable into many pieces provided more volts than the whole.  One team, sectioning a grapefruit was able to reach 8 volts!

Student using his teeth to strip the wire

We have power! 

Impressive voltages

Hmmm, how can you maximize the power?

Jackie assisting with questions

Steve encouraging a student to split up the potato

Steve helping his student 

Coming up with a plan

Michelle and Jackie did a great job with reflection questions

Starting materials for the battery 

We made it! 

Michelle and Levi looking at this group's work

Student collaboration

Janet's team

Trying to use only one fruit 

Series for the most power! 

                                                              Check out these videos!

Overall, teachers and students enjoyed the process of using simple materials to make a battery as well as understanding the differences between materials and how they relate to generating power. It was great to see kids be competitive and want to produce the most voltage! We thank Lisa and Steve as well as their students for being such great hosts and having us in their classrooms!