engineer – iLearn Technology

ASCEville- Engineering Just for Fun

November 17, 2013Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2838 views

What it is: ASCEville is a good place for students to try their hand at civil engineering through online games, offline activities, videos, and contests. In ASCEville, students can explore civil engineering history and where civil engineering is found in our daily lives. Online resources for kindergarten through 12th grade will help you find just the right activity for your classroom!

How to integrate ASCEville into the classroom: ASCEville is easy to use in any classroom. With activity ideas and games for every age level, this is an easy site to use and integrate into the math or science class seamlessly. Students will appreciate the hands-on nature of the site, and the ability to see what all of that math they are learning gets applied to. The activities on ASCEville will give your students a tangible connection point to math and science concepts that they are learning.

Create a mini engineering fair in your classroom. Invite each student to independently choose an offline activity in the Just for Fun section of the site. Students can choose to build a gumdrop dome, build a globe-shaped clubhouse, stack a tower of cups, test out pressure on paper, design a paper table, build a high-rise tower, or build a paper bridge. Students should approach each activity expecting failure (love that!). Ask your students to record their successes and failures as they build through drawings, pictures, and notes. What tweaks made a difference? Why? On the day of the “fair” students can set up their final projects and include a small collection of observations they made and their pictures/notes along the way. Ask students to share with each other the challenges they faced, what they tried, and if they were able to overcome the challenge.

This site is a great resource for students inquiring into civil engineering, how buildings and cities are designed and built, or how engineering can be used to keep us safe during natural disasters. There is enough information on the site to spark new lines of inquiry and some great ways for students to use design thinking to further explore engineering concepts.

Tips: Don’t forget to check out the Educators section for some great additional resources, lessons, and ideas! Thanks to Anastasis parent Paul for sending us this great site!

What do you think? How will you use ASCEville in your classroom?

NOVA: Design a Parachute

April 14, 2011Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2933 views

What it is: NOVA from PBS has an excellent interactive called Design a Parachute. In this activity, students take on the role of head engineer in charge of designing the Mars Explorer Rover parachute. The goal is to design a chute that will get the Mars Explorer Rover to the surface of Mars safely. The interactive challenges students to consider trade-offs in parachute stability, strength and volume as they design the perfect chute. As students begin the activity, they are briefed on system requirements that must be met. Students are also asked to consider cost as they design their parachute. Finally students design and test their chute.

How to integrate the NOVA Design a Parachute interactive into the classroom: In this activity, students assume the role of engineer as they design a parachute that will slow the Mars Explorer Rover as it lands on the surface of Mars. I like the authentic feel of this activity, students are led through the thinking process of an engineer as they consider all of the requirements the chute must meet before they begin designing.

Approach this interactive as a class using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. As a class, get “briefed” on the requirements for the parachute design. Discuss how these requirements may impact the parachute design. Treat this like an actual briefing and encourage discussion (all ages like to pretend!). Before students access the interactive, ask them to sketch their thoughts about parachute design. This lets them think through the design apart from the pre-determined categories presented in the interactive.

Students can design and test their parachutes individually in a one to one computer lab setting or take turns designing and testing in a computer center lab on classroom computers.

Debrief after the interactive to discuss the parameters that were the most successful and what students learned about volume, drag, strength and stability.

Extend this activity by creating a mock-up of the parachute they designed online. Find a high place on the playground or in the building where students can test these parachutes. What did they have to adjust for an Earth bound parachute?

Tips: The NOVA page has a great introduction paragraph about how engineers approach a problem. Be sure to read it with your students! Encourage students to learn more about the Mars Explorer Rover before designing the chute. It may adjust their thinking!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using NOVA Design a Parachute in your classroom!

NASA Space Place

January 14, 2010January 14, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3253 views

What it is: NASA has hundreds of excellent educational resources online. NASA Space Place is another awesome site for elementary kids to explore science and space. The Space Place has fun online games, animations, projects, and fun facts about Earth, space and technology. Space Place Live is an animated talk show where all the guests are real scientists and engineers who work on space and Earth missions. Students can find out what it is like to work for NASA, how the scientist or engineer got started, and what they like to do for fun. There are currently 7 episodes that students can enjoy topics include: solar wind, satellites, weather, space missions, telescopes, engineering, the birth of stars, Mars, robots, and black holes. Even though the show is animated, the experts involved are the actual experts. NASA Space Place has a variety of on and offline games with everything from scrambled pictures, to world puzzles, crazy quizzes and board games. Students can learn more about weather, space, satellites, the environment, (and much more) through game play. There are a variety of projects and experiments on the site with step by step directions for students. These are great for the classroom, science fair, or at home on a rainy day. Space Place makes finding games, animations, and projects related to your curriculum easy arranging the site by subjects. Use Space Place when you are learning about planets and the solar system, stars, galaxies, and black holes, laws of the universe (light, motion, gravity), the Earth, and space technology. Space Place has several storybooks that can be viewed on or offline.

How to integrate NASA Space Place into the classroom: Because of the wealth of resources on this site, there are a variety of ways to use it in your classroom. The animations are a neat way to bring expert scientists and engineers into your classroom. Share an animated video a week as your students explore the solar system and universe. The games reinforce learning, use them as a center activity on the classroom computers as they relate to your curriculum. Many of the games encourage exploration and trial and error (these are my favorite kind of learning games for students). Students can explore the Amazing Facts section of the site and then complete the trivia game to test out their understanding. In the project section, you will find experiments and science crafts. Choose some of these to complete as a class or assign each student a different project to test and share with the class. Projects would also make an excellent stop during science fair time. Use the Space Place Storybooks as animated flipbooks online as a class with a projector/interactive whiteboard, or print them out for your classroom library. The books could be used as an online reading center on your classroom computers as well. These stories are sure to capture your students imagination!

Tips: Be sure to check out the educator page on NASA Space Place, it is packed full of good ideas, newsletters, printable images of space for bulletin boards, space related articles, math related articles, printable posters, and podcasts to download. With the renewed push for STEM education, there has never been a better time to include sites like NASA Space Place to excite and engage your students.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Nasa Interactive Timeline in your classroom.