I am very excited to finally get my STEM blog up and running! It has been a very busy and productive start to the year in the STEM classroom. As many of you know, I was not able to start here at Wentworth until the end of September as I finished up my commitments in the South Portland schools. Since then, it has been a whirlwind for me as I get to know Wentworth and its wonderful community. Everyone has been so welcoming and supportive. Thank you!
Here's an update on what we've been up to in the STEM Pathways class this past trimester:
We started out by focusing on some essential habits of successful engineers--cooperation and teamwork. We accomplished this by playing some games like cooperative cups and participating in some team challenges like popsicle-stick chain reactions. Next, we moved into learning about the Engineering Design Process and how engineers define technologies. Did you know that technologies can be anything that is engineered by a human and solves a problem? Students were very surprised that not all technologies have to be electronic! Here is an outline of our weekly topics and questions covered this trimester:
- Cooperation and Teamwork
- Engineering Design Process (EDP)
- What makes a technology, a technology? How can we improve existing technologies?
- Aeronautical Engineering: Designing technologies that fly through Earth’s atmosphere!
- Design a Flying Technology using the EDP
- Improve a Flying Technology using the EDP
- Let’s Learn TinkerCad: A web-based 3D modeling tool
- Create a 3D model of your Flying Technology in TinkerCad and print some designs in our CubePro Duo 3D printer
- Enrichment activities: Pom-Pom Design Challenge and TinkerCad Tutorials
