Product Spotlight

One Small Step for STEM, one Giant Leap for Students

Implementing STEM into your classroom can be done incrementally - one small step at a time. And be assured, your student's interest & comprehension of all the STEM subject matters (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) will take a giant leap forward.

One fallacy within some winds of STEM education doctrine is that this change must be systemic - that it has to happen as a whole within today's education system. While that is a good goal, classroom teachers can, and are, making incremental changes that provide STEM connections through hands-on activities. Incorporating STEM into classrooms is a grass-roots level initiative that can provide the impetus (both in support and in implementation strategy) for systemic change. 

If you are like many other teachers, taking that first small step is the toughest, so here are some suggestions. Hopefully, one of these will either click with you, or will provide an idea of what would work for you and your classroom:

1. Modify an existing activity to include some STEM connections. For instance, you may already be doing MTVs (mousetrap vehicles) as a technology activity, having students actively problem solve within design parameters to construct a working MTV. During the process, really anywhere within the introduction, wrap-up, building time, etc., STEM concepts can be mentioned that can provide connections for the students. For instance, mention that the energy being used to propel the MTV is stored (or potential) energy in the spring - a science concept. Or you can ask the question, for your design, how far will the MTV move with one revolution of the axle? This math concept is based on the formula for the circumference of a circle, so they could measure the diameter of their wheels, multiply by pi (3.14 will work just fine), and that will provide them the distance travelled each time the wheel/axle rotates once.
2. Incorporate a new activity that has good STEM connections. One I recommend highly for getting started in STEM is the Straw Rocket activity. Not only does it have multiple STEM connections, it is a quick build - getting students into the STEM concepts without a great deal of time spent in construction. And, it's relatively inexpensive. Many other activities can also fill this bill - pick one out that captures your interest, or that you think might capture the interest of your class. 
3. Investigate STEM curriculum offerings that link STEM concepts to activities. Pitsco's series of Getting Started Teacher Guides were written for this specific purpose. They incorporate STEM concepts using Pitsco kits and equipment. Just thumbing through these guides can provide a spark for an idea of how you might transform a current classroom activity into a STEM activity. It's not rocket science - well maybe in some cases it is - but it's not as difficult as you might think!
4. Do a simple demonstration using a kit or piece of equipment, and talk about different STEM concepts within that demonstration. For instance, the MM-1 Stirling Engine works off the energy within a cup of hot water. Heat a cup of water to boiling (microwave or otherwise) and set the MM-1 on top of the cup. After 15 seconds, give the propeller a spin, and away it goes - converting the heat energy of the hot water into rotational energy of the propeller. This can be a very good introduction to an energy unit, and can provide many STEM connections: heat energy, expansion, contraction, mechanical linkages, ideal gas law, conversion of energy from heat to mechanical, conversion of linear mechanical movement to rotational, measuring & calculating rpm (revolutions per minute), measuring & calculating the rate of change of rpm as the water begins to cool, measurement of water temperature, graphing water temperature and rpm over time, and more! These demonstrations don't have to be complex, but they can be if that fits your classroom situation & needs. And in the case of the MM-1, be ready for a discussion of free energy or perpetual motion machines!
5. Show a youtube.com, teachertube.com or a commercial video (like The Way Things Work) of a Rube Goldberg type device. Have students watch and list how science, technology, engineering and mathematics is used within the devices - then have a discussion about their comments.

Rube Goldberg Contraptions? Consider Pitsco's TETRIX & Roller Coaster Track

Constructing a solid framework for holding contraptions is always a challenge. Pitsco's TETRIX building system can help meet that challenge!

Within many classrooms, a Rube Goldberg-style challenge is pretty common – even Science Olympiad's Mission Possible competition incorporates these types of mechanisms. Finding materials to provide a solid framework for simple mechanisms is not always so simple; however, students can use many parts and pieces from the TETRIX building system to create frameworks to meet specific construction needs.

Swiveling joints? It's a breeze with TETRIX. Need large structures to hold multiple levers, pulleys, funnels, gears, string, and channels for rolling balls? TETRIX pieces bolt together in a myriad of shapes and sizes. 

Speaking of channels for rolling balls, get rid of those pieces of foam pipe insulation that are difficult to cut and use. Consider using Pitsco's new Roller Coaster Track instead. It comes in a variety of lengths and may be twisted, looped, circled, and so on – configure it as you need. It's made of durable rubber and works very well with 1/2" to 1" balls. I like the steel myself, but wooden and even plastic balls can have a place in the project.

When the Roller Coaster Track is used in conjunction with a TETRIX framework, some very intricate and steady channels can be produced. These are excellent for transferring energy from a rolling ball to a lever, which releases a rotating arm holding a golf club, which strikes a golf ball, which falls and provides the energy (via an attached string-and-pulley mechanism) to lift the end of a plastic cylinder partially filled with water, which fills a cup that is sitting on the elevated end of a teeter-totter, which then starts another ball down a rubber track . . . you get the picture!

And even if you don't get the picture, your students will. 

Below are some links to the products mentioned above and a link to a video of a Rube Goldberg-style mechanism; lots of good ideas are included in this! 

TETRIX: 

TETRIX Resource Set

TETRIX Robotic Base Set

Roller Coaster Track:

20' Track Section with Balls

3/4" Steel Balls

Video Clip (about three minutes worth of action):

Contraptions

Enjoy!

Flexibility - Implementing STEM Through the Pitsco Engineering Academy

We all know of programs that have been implemented to bring STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) or Engineering into the curriculum. Most are very rigid in their course selections, content, timeframes and scheduling. 

Pitsco's Engineering Academy is different - it's flexible.

First off, there are currently twelve different courses available - each covering various disciplines and/or topics within engineering. This allows schools to pick and choose those courses that are the best fit for their school & community.

This flexibility in course selection is closely related to the flexibility of the Engineering Academy in scheduling courses. With most courses being 9 weeks in length, they can be placed within a school schedule in a number of different ways. They can be back to back with other 9-week Academy courses to complete a semester timeframe, they can be combined with other 9-week and/or 18-week courses to complete a full year of courses, or courses can be chosen and scheduled to produce 3 years worth of STEM education - practically a department in-and-of itself.

There is also great flexibility in where the courses can be placed within curricular areas. The courses can augment a math curriculum, a science curriculum or can be a part of a Career Tech program. The ability of the Engineering Academy to augment various curricular areas is due to the fact that the courses are not providing core content - but contextual connections within many educational arenas. Students are encouraged to complete a rigorous schedule of study within core content areas.

And within the Engineering Academy courses, teachers have the flexibility to modify the scope and sequence of the activities to focus on specific areas - whether that is due to student needs, curricular concerns, or specific interests of students and/or teachers. For instance, if a teacher has experience in aerodynamics, then activities within the Aeronautical Engineering course can be expanded to take advantage of that experience. Or if mechanical engineering careers are prevalent within the geographic area of the school, then special focus can be brought to the Mechanical Engineering course to provide more in-depth education within that topic.

With all the courses, a scope and sequence document provides the roadmap for the teacher to complete the course in a specific amount of time. However, more activities are available to include within the course if needed, and activities can be modified, enhanced, shortened or intensified - its all flexible for the teacher to manipulate as the situation dictates.

It could be said that Pitsco has bent over backwards to provide flexibility to the Engineering Academy! Pun intended.

Incremental Solutions for STEM Education

Implementing STEM in the classroom does not have to be an all or nothing proposition – it can be done incrementally.

For instance, if you are a science teacher, you probably have the ‘S’ of STEM education pretty well in hand. Or if you are a math teacher, the mathematics portion of STEM comes naturally, or if you are a technology teacher, the technology and engineering components of STEM may be a breeze. However, few teachers are fully loaded with all the content of these four subject areas. Hands-on activities can help bridge the gap by incorporating these subject areas within guided, contextual, hands-on activities. Here is one example:

Green Force and Motion

In this activity, students build a model solar car from a kit such as the Pitsco SunEzoon or SunZoon Lite. Once completed, further activities (beyond the initial construction of the solar car) can guide the student through STEM concepts in real-world context: 

Science

     ·      You can teach how photovoltaic cells convert the energy from the sun into electrical energy that powers the small model vehicle

     ·      The vehicles can be used to illustrate concepts within force and motion

     ·      Illustrate the use of energy and power to accomplish  CONTACT _Con-424081A034C work

Technology

     ·      Talk about the different systems that are within the solar vehicles and how they are interconnected

     ·      Work with different gears and gear ratios to determine the effect on the speed or power of the car

     ·      Look at the potential social impact that solar vehicles might have

Engineering

     ·      Have students design a solar vehicle that uses two solar panels

     ·      Students can collect data on their design and analyze its performance

     ·      Develop a competition to see who can build the fastest solar car using two panels and the set of gears supplied with the kit

Mathematics

     ·      Have students time the cars over a specified distance and calculate the speed of the car

     ·      Students determine the speed of the cars running at various angles to the sun and graph the results

     ·      Have students calculate the rpm of the motor based on the circumference of the wheels, the gear ratio, and the distance traveled over time

Many other activities can be done within the STEM arena with these solar vehicles. A good resource for more activities would be the SunEzoon Getting Started Teacher’s guide. Follow the link below to see the table of contents of this guide and a sample of one complete activity. All the activities within the guide are correlated to national NSTA, ITEA and NCTM standards, and all the activities are teacher reproducible for your classroom. Print them off and use them! Here is the link to the SunEzoon Teachers Guide:

http://shop.pitsco.com/sharedimages/resources/59465GSGuideSample.pdf

For information on the SunEzoon kit:

http://shop.pitsco.com/store/detail.aspx?CategoryID=115&by=9&pl=10&ID=2209&c=1&t=0&l=2

For information on the Sunzoon Lite kit:

http://shop.pitsco.com/store/detail.aspx?KeyWords=sunzoon&by=20&ID=2647&c=0&t=0&l=0

Getting down with math and science

The first parachutes, 10 centuries ago, were novelties designed to emulate the flight of birds and allow soft landings on jumps from tower tops. Second-generation parachutes followed the advent of manned hot-air balloons in the eighteenth century and promised improved safety. The third stage of parachuting, recreational skydiving, came in the 1950s.

Now, with the Parachutes Getting Started Package, Pitsco Education is pioneering a fourth stage - the use of parachutes in the classroom to bring math and science concepts to life.

The Parachutes Getting Started Package provides all the materials, instructional content, and activity ideas needed to design and deploy 25 student parachutes. An abundance of activities probing various mathematical and scientific concepts is possible. After their parachutes are designed, students attach a payload and then test and retest, design and redesign. Possible goals range from the transmission of a fragile payload safely to the ground (an egg is the old standby for this experiment) to calculating velocity and acceleration to quantifying the virtues of various parachute shapes.

Scalar quantities and vector quantities, velocity and speed, average acceleration and acceleration due to gravity - all these concepts, each with accompanying formulas or quantities, are hard to keep straight. Giving students the chance to interact with them in a direct and tangible way really helps them parse the concepts. And the vivid, exciting activities they'll perform help to fix the concepts in their memories.

And that is only the beginning. In the testing process, students become practiced scientists - designing experiments, making hypotheses, and keeping careful notes. "Back to the drawing board" really just means another opportunity to consider the data they've collected and improve their understanding. Hands-on activities don't mean abandoning pencil and paper basics - they mean providing students with an additional approach to comprehension and another path to success.

Parachutes were being developed centuries before there was much practical use for them. The idea of slow graceful descent and victory over gravity obviously has an inherent fascination. With the Parachutes Getting Started Package, teachers can tap into this same fascination to provide great learning activities for their students.

In All Probability You're Wondering, "What is a Binostat?"

That's a very good question - and you may have asked it if you have seen the Pitsco Binostat in the catalog, or online @

Pitsco Binostat

The best connection for most teachers (and some students) is from watching "The Price Is Right" when they have the PLINKO game.  A disc is dropped through a grid of pins, and with each pin it hits, it has a 50/50 chance (theoretically anyway) of going to the left or right of the pin. The disc works its way down the grid of pins and lands in a slot at the bottom of the board - with each slot having a prize value. Of course, some prize values are greater than others, and it is rare that the disc falls into a high value slot.

OK, so where is the educational value? Let me count the ways:

1. Inform students that games of chance are actually quite predictable - and usually not to the benefit of the player. Before demonstrating the Binostat to them, have them predict which slots at the bottom of the board will be most likely for the balls to land in. Ask if there is the same chance for every slot, or if some slots are more likely to be hit than others - and get them to assign some values (like 5 out of 100) to the slots. Then drop 100 balls through the Binostat and compare the results to those predicted by the students. Ask the students if they would have lost money or gained money if they had gambled based on their original predictions. Ask the students how the manager of a gambling club might use this information.
2. Demonstrate Standard Distribution Curves - In theory, the balls in the Binostat should fall in a standard distribution curve, also known as a Bell curve. This curve is made when the majority of the balls fall into the middle rows. Each row farther away from the middle receives fewer balls – the very outside rows often receive no balls at all. So, the probability of most of the balls falling in the middle is very high, while the probability of most of the balls falling to the sides is very low. Its difficult to make bell curves very exciting, but the use of the Binostat to make it a hands-on and visual activity can help.
   
3. Binary decision-making. In the Binostat each time a ball hits a pin it makes a decision - left or right. In many ways, this is similar to the way computers operate - on yes or no decisions. Dependent upon each yes or no decision, the ball's path is determined by which side it falls toward. This path is similar to a computer program - with the results (or path) of the program based on decisions for each step of the program. The decisions in a computer program may be based upon many things; input data, sensors, previous decisions, etc.. Have the students drop a ball through the Binostat and draw a diagram of the path of ball, labeling if the ball went left or right at each pin. Have students repeat the process with another 5 or 6 balls, noting the different paths that are taken, and the final results that are obtained.
4. Logical thinking. The Binostat can be an excellent hands-on introduction to truth tables - which are the mathematical basis for logic. When working with truth tables something is either true or false - again, similar to the left/right options for the plastic ball in the Binostat.

Chances are that the Pitsco Binostat can provide the answer to that nagging question: "Yes, or No?"