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Today, everyone is familiar with wireless technology and uses it everyday, but few people understand how it really works. The "Wired for Wireless" lessons started as a high school level plan, but was adapted for lessons taught at summer STEAM camp. The links below lead to an overview of the daily topics, a complete lesson plan listing, and a reflection on how I might do it again next time.
I have always had a fascination with the human nervous system, and think it is the most elegant engineering design ever seen. I developed this brief introduction to neurosciences for hat same STEAM camp. Like the wireless lesson above, everyone has a nervous system, but few know how it really works.
The most "maker" lesson I have done during my Apprentice Teaching is a Project Lead The Way lesson on compound machines taught in the Principles of Engineering at Westwood High School. After learning the basics on simple machines and ideal mechanical advantage in benchmark lessons, student teams were given a deign goal for a compound machine design to accomplish a specific mechanical task - lifting a given weight six inches in less than 3 minutes using input force from only one person. Their compound machine had to incorporate three simple machines, each with an ideal mechanical advantage of greater than 2 to 1.
They had to document their team design process. Each team member came up with a perspective sketch and description of a candidate design, and they evaluated them and chose a final design with a decision matrix based on the design criteria. The final design was then drawn up in a more formal design sketch with specifications that would allow it to be constructed. Once the team members all agreed their idea would work and was well specific and communicated, we threw them a bit of a curve and had each team hand their design off to another team who would build it. They soon realized the need for more specific sketches and descriptions, and we relented and let each team build their own design. They all discovered that changes were needed to complete the machine and meet the design goals. Each time did a presentation of their design to the class, detailing how it met the design goals and calculating and presenting its ideal mechanical advantage, actual mechanical advantage, and efficiency. This constructed these concepts much more accurately and permanently in their minds much more effectively than any lecture.
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