The 2015-2016 academic year has been an educationally
stimulating time as middle and high school students in the School District of
Hillsborough County have had the opportunity to work on various in and
out-of-class STEM projects. These projects are targeted not only to spark
students’ interest in STEM through hands-on learning experiences, but also garner
a firm understanding of each of these concepts, their applications in day-to-day
operations and in a broader context learn about the Science, Engineering and
Technology involved in manufacturing products en masse. In keeping with this
goal, students from Buchanan Middle School in Tampa recently worked on a manufacturing
project that entailed designing and building a dinosaur puzzle.
As part of the 7th grade class project that
teaches students about manufacturing and advanced
scientific concepts, 44
students from Buchanan Middle School were entasked to design a dinosaur puzzle.
Students had to make cutouts and then reassemble the cutouts to make the puzzle.
The idea, according to Walter Watts, who is currently the bio-engineering
academy technology teacher at Buchanan, was to create an automated
manufacturing plant that could assemble the dinosaur puzzle without
people/manual labor involved. For the project, students worked in teams for
three weeks. They had to learn pseudo coding and then brainstormed ideas and
designs to create an automated assembly line, as well as formulate a pseudo
code on how everything works. Students worked for three weeks to complete their
projects which culminated in a class presentation for each group of students.
In addition to students at Buchanan, students at Greco
Middle School and Middleton High School also worked on various STEM projects. At
Greco, students participated in the annual “Shark Tank” competition as part of
their capstone project. The competition is modeled after the television show
where aspiring inventors and entrepreneurs design a product and then pitch their product and
business model to potential business partners and buyers. The “Sharks” or the
investors evaluate the presentation, and base their decision to invest, or not, on a particular product based on the final product design, research, and prototype
itself.
This year there were a total of nine “Shark” investors
who evaluated 11 projects and business
proposals from 4-8th grade
STEM students. Teams were evaluated on various metrics that ranged from the
overall concept of the product, budgetary outline, completed prototype, project
presentation that included PowerPoint presentations, talking points about the
product/business and follow-up questions and answer sessions between the
students and the “shark” investors.
The students at Middleton High School also participated
in the Engineering Capstone Final Project as part of the “Project Lead the Way”
Pathways to Engineering program. A total of 11 projects were designed and
presented by approximately 33 students. To complete their project each team had
to identify a problem that they sought to resolve through an innovative
design/invention. Similar to the other two schools, students worked throughout
the year to build a case/thesis for their project, brainstormed solutions, and
digitally designed their prototype, as well as built and tested their design
concepts.
Following the guidelines laid out by Engineering Capstone Project- Lead The Way,
each group of students provided an overview of their project to the judges.
Danielly Orozco of FLATE served as a judge in each of the competitions at Greco and at
Middleton High School, and provided professional insight/observation to each
group about their design and viability of their product. The objective was to
constructively critique and evaluate projects against real-world industry
standards.
In all of this, the projects provided a hands-on the
deck approach in giving students from each school
a better understanding about
automation, product design, production as well as marketing their ideas in a
real-world setting. Students learned how to write pseudo codes to perform a
series of automated tasks and draft business proposals and pitches that are
part of a technician’s and/or manufacturers’ everyday job in real world
settings. “Problem based learning is the best way for someone to learn how to
solve real-world problems and learn about manufacturing processes” said Watts. To
that effect, the teachers at Buchanan, Greco and Middleton each look forward to
working with FLATE in using its free resources, and leveraging the Center’s
business contacts to set-up industry tours for students to enhance their experiential
learning and understanding of business concepts and automated processes in high-tech
production environments.
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