 |
How can we help students recognize
that they are part of a global economy?
I am currently coaching my third First Lego League (FLL) team as they prepare for regional competition. For those of you not familiar with FLL other than the Lego robotics portion of the competition, there is an equally important project component. Several years ago, the topic focused on climate connections - specifically, working with students to gain a greater understanding of the Earth's complex climate systems and developing innovative solutions that would improve the world in which we live. My student team went to school in a community that was undergoing an important economic debate on how to best treat storm water drainage. Estimates had placed unfunded mandated facility upgrades at millions of dollars during the height of the economic recession. Fortunately for our team, our local mayor had been a robot builder himself, during high school. He took an interest in a proposal the team had to use a super-absorbent cornstarch polymer called, "Super Slurper" to retain rainwater in local lawns and offered to facilitate a test site to test their hypothesis after the competition season.
The day before the competition (during a class demonstration of their robot), the students learned that Mayor Tebben had died of a sudden heart attack. During the competition students proudly wore the city lapel pins he had given them and shared with the judges and the audience how having the mayor of their town and a working scientist believe in their ideas, had made them realize that even kids can solve big problems.
The climate connections project was a wonderful example of how one can teach students to think globally and act locally. Students started out by investigating ways to reduce humidity in the atmosphere. One of the climate connection suggestions was talking to people working in jobs locally that are affected by the weather. Because we live in an agricultural area, students researched the Peoria Agricultural Research Lab in Peoria to find out what they did. The first idea, after learning about Super Slurper, was to hypothetically create a car that could take humidity out of the air with Super Slurper filters and then convert the water into hydrogen to power the car. But after visiting the local weather station to meet with the meteorologist, students learned that humidity was caused by global factors that they could not solve locally, so the students began to look at the flooding that was taking place along the Illinois River and in our town.
Students had read that Super Slurper was already used in sand bags and in potting soil. Golf courses used it when putting down new grass. In October 21, 2008 the students met with Mayor Dave Tebben at Pekin City Hall. On October 28, they met with Dr. Victoria Finkenstadt, a research chemist at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (nickname: Peoria Ag Lab) who showed them the real Super Slurper and allowed them to conduct experiments with it! She also volunteered to help the Mayor after the competition was over.
The students wrote a play called Agent S. and the "Rain of Terror" where a disguised Dr. Finkenstadt (armed with her new discovery called Super Slurper) becomes Agent S. and saves Watertown from Dr. H20. They didn't win the competition that year, nor were they able to get the their test plot off the ground after losing Mayor Tebben, but they did return to win the project AND the teamwork portion of the regional competition the next year. *
Looking at economic concepts through a quest not only gave students the power to make informed and responsible choices throughout their lives as consumers, savers, investors, workers, citizens, and participants in our global economy, but it also provided them with new concepts of professions they could be a part of in the future.
* Team Electric Surge won with a transportation project using falcons to reduce bird strikes on airport runways.
The climate connections project was a wonderful example of how one can teach students to think globally and act locally. Students started out by investigating ways to reduce humidity in the atmosphere. One of the climate connection suggestions was talking to people working in jobs locally that are affected by the weather. Because we live in an agricultural area, students researched the Peoria Agricultural Research Lab in Peoria to find out what they did. The first idea, after learning about Super Slurper, was to hypothetically create a car that could take humidity out of the air with Super Slurper filters and then convert the water into hydrogen to power the car. But after visiting the local weather station to meet with the meteorologist, students learned that humidity was caused by global factors that they could not solve locally, so the students began to look at the flooding that was taking place along the Illinois River and in our town.
Students had read that Super Slurper was already used in sand bags and in potting soil. Golf courses used it when putting down new grass. In October 21, 2008 the students met with Mayor Dave Tebben at Pekin City Hall. On October 28, they met with Dr. Victoria Finkenstadt, a research chemist at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (nickname: Peoria Ag Lab) who showed them the real Super Slurper and allowed them to conduct experiments with it! She also volunteered to help the Mayor after the competition was over.
The students wrote a play called Agent S. and the "Rain of Terror" where a disguised Dr. Finkenstadt (armed with her new discovery called Super Slurper) becomes Agent S. and saves Watertown from Dr. H20. They didn't win the competition that year, nor were they able to get the their test plot off the ground after losing Mayor Tebben, but they did return to win the project AND the teamwork portion of the regional competition the next year. *
Looking at economic concepts through a quest not only gave students the power to make informed and responsible choices throughout their lives as consumers, savers, investors, workers, citizens, and participants in our global economy, but it also provided them with new concepts of professions they could be a part of in the future.
* Team Electric Surge won with a transportation project using falcons to reduce bird strikes on airport runways.
No comments:
Post a Comment