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Teaching Fifth Graders Engineering
Jamie noticed a NYT story saying "To compete in a global economy, some school districts are offering engineering lessons to students in kindergarten. " The story is about 5th graders working on a new experimental curriculum that is well beyond the egg drop of old.
I remember the egg drop. We also built bridges out of popsicle sticks, and tested them to see which could hold the most weight. That was the most engineering related hands on project I think I had in all of elementary school.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class, especially since I rule.
... but he couldn't teach kindergartners the concept of load bearing supports. I like the idea, and I applaud the encouragement of sciences etc in school but kindergarten, really?
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
It's great that schools are doing this, but I think parents are the biggest factor. Parents have a strong influence on the toys kids get at an early age, and at that early age children can show an interest in almost anything.
Want your kids to grow up with a healthy respect for / interest in engineering? Buy them Lego, Meccano (aka Erector Sets), K'Nex, etc... any toy that lets them play in a sandbox with minimal limitations, and particularly any toy that allows the creation of functioning mechanisms
Supplement this with some old hardware that they can take apart with only a screwdriver (and do it with them if they're too young to do it safely).
Computers and programming languages are also a great place to start, especially since the sandbox they provide allows easy experimentation (if you made an error, things don't blow up -- you can always reset and try again). However programming is arguably something that's best for slightly older children, whereas taking apart old mechanical/electrical hardware can be enjoyed by many children even as early as age 5 or before.
Of course this won't necessarily result in an engineer -- after all a child's interests can be largely determined by their personality, their school, and their social environment. However, by setting the foundations with these types of toys, your kid will at least have an understanding of engineering, which can only be beneficial. The fundamental point, I think, is that you can't just rely on schools -- as a parent you have to lay the foundations for learning (of any field or subject) at home, by spending time with your child and guiding them towards productive fun activities (and no, using the TV as a babysitter all the time will not accomplish this goal).
I'm not a parent yet, so I guess I'll see how well I do in this area when the time comes... However I do know what my parents did, and I think it worked pretty well
"And not a single house blew down."
That's an F for the testers, then.
I was the real korpiq until I woke up clowned.
Back when I was in 6th grade (about 20 years ago) we did some engineering stuff, both mechanical as well as some electrical. I remember the most fun project was making our own remote control cars that had to battle it out. The intention was to see who could design the best car to push other cars out of the circle, but I remember my partner and I turned it into more of a battlebots experiment where we essentially had a drill on the front of our car to disable the other cars (most were made out of balsa wood). The trick was, we were limited to certain specs, including a max of 4 motors. Most people made the obvious 4 wheeled car, but we opted for a three wheel car that was nice and pointy with the "drill" on the front utilizing the fourth motor.
Fun times...
Nothing really new here. "Primitive" societies have involved children in engineering -- boatbuilding, weapons tech, housing construction, medicine, agriculture -- for millenia.
1) Work harder than almost any other branch of schooling 2) Work for free on the evenings and weekends 3) Do things that no one cares about or appreciates 4) Life-long learning never stops, what about life? 5) Employment opportunities fall drastically after 35, you're too old 6) Watch engineering melt down and get exported to cheaper countries 7) Fuck it, go to law school
8) Profit by bringing dubiously generic and obvious patent cases against those daft enough still to be producing something for a living and who won't be able to afford to defend themselves in court.
Obviously not something that would be done in school, but playing with firecrackers and other incendiary devices provided me with some engineering insights early on.
Sample objective: achieving maximum height of a projectile using an explosive propellant.
Lessons learned: 1) Use a seamless can (such as an empty butane canister), as normal cans would just blow apart. 2) Set canister in a basin of water to minimize energy loss, with firecracker suspended by the wick through a hole on top.
Results: A couple hundred meters altitude, incredibly low deviation from vertical.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
(Damnit, what is slashdot coming to?)
Anyways.... fifth graders are not in kindergarten (or at least, they damn well shouldn't be!)
At least the article was a lot less confusing by saying they are teaching it to levels from kindergarten through grade 5.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I like the overall idea, but I think they could introduce some "Mythbuster"-type experimentation. First it helps understand the "Hypothesis-Methodology-Test-Conclusion" scientific approach and it also encourages them to be critical of pre-conceived ideas.
In the old days, you went to university at what - 14? However, very few went there.
The "problem" with this is that modern schooling of the social-democratic form has emphasised equality and coherence - hence, the class largely progresses for the first 10 years, up until you can get some differentiation, at the learning speed of the moderate-to-slow student. This is a conscious choice. Not to intentionally "keep people stupid", but because childhood is seen by many as a period to mess around and have fun and learn a bit, and by others that if you separated people in classes by ability it would be a gargantuan step towards a formalised "class system".
I remember in 4th grade, when I finished my class mathematics book in 2 months. What did they give me to do? Page upon page upon page (an I mean literally, something like 5 per maths hour) of questions that were of an IDENTICAL DIFFICULTY so that we wouldn't "progress beyond the rest of the class". One other person in the class was the same (and later ended up at Microsoft, a brilliant programmer but a social wreck), and we would compete for the number of sheets of identical-level calculations we could go through per hour. Not to mention, this caused a level of boredom and anguish at times which was a bit like getting stabbed in the eye and suffering literally a brain implosion, but it was all both planned and justified by the 'egalitarianism' perspective. I believe the US is different from Europe in that you have at least some form of 'bright students classes', whilst this is extremely rare in Europe.
So it's a tradeoff and a decision to make. Will you separate out the brighest students, give them more attention and better tutoring, with the hopes that they do great things for your nation? Or won't you? There are a large number of people in the academic world arguing for either.
Many people consider design of a one-off prototype as engineering, but often real engineering means creating something that can be manufactured, or creating something that can be very reliable, or creating something that can be made cheaply. I have met many PhD's in engineering that only prefer to make a single working prototype just like they did to get their "engineering" PhD. Sure, the technology is cool, but if the target application requires more than one, what good is it?
A particularly effective LEGO League coach, when handed a robot by erstwhile middle schoolers, proceeded to pull the robot horizonally. If it came apart, he handed the 'bot back to the team with two words: "Horizontal stresses."
If it held together, he nodded, then pulled the robot up and down. If it came apart, he handed the 'bot back to the team with two words: "Vertical stresses."
If the robot could handle stress, he asked to see what it could do on the scoring table.
He also made sure that there were cookies, sometimes, and drinks.
Good times, those.
When I was in grade 5, which was in the late 80ies, we were building lego technics robots and connecting them to Apple IIgs computers and controlling the motors with Apple Logo.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Probably should just teach them the languages of the countries were the engineering work will be done.
It will give them a head start for when they go there to look for work.
Yes, but that entire way of life is predicated on cheap energy, that is, oil. As energy gets more expensive, we won't be able to support a parasite class any longer.
It'll sort itself out.
Yes, but that entire way of life is predicated on cheap energy, that is, oil. As energy gets more expensive, we won't be able to support a parasite class any longer.
It'll sort itself out.
Do you really think that the parasite class will be first to suffer? Eventually they'll go but history shows that they will maintain their lifestyle as the expense of others until the others rebel or die
Being a technical person, I'm happy to see any attempt at showing students that science and engineering are interesting.
However, the reality is that there are only a few "growth" professions left on our side of the world:
Until "someine" stems the tide of outsourcing, and actually gets people to care about science and engineering again, very few students are going to pursue technical careers. I think it's sad, but the reality is that no one with any decision making authority respects job roles that aren't in the list above.
I don't mean to sound negative - I'd love to see a resurgence of smart, technically minded students come out of school and want to do interesting work. If there aren't jobs and opportunity though, what will come of this? It sucks fo rme too - in my mind people management = adult babysitting, and project management = checking boxes off a Gantt chart and endless begging of people to do things. Increasingly, it looks like that's what will be available to us techies in the future.
9) Develop a drinking problem
10) Get schooled by IANAL's on /.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
My observations show enviro cliches are more popular now. The more guilt inducingly politically correct the better. If the hypothesis / test / conclusion steps are a bit weak, well, we'll give credit anyway because its so important. That's what I've been seeing.
Besides, someone could get hurt/maimed/killed/sued from doing anything, so its better to just make a poster on the topic of enviro original sin.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
You give the students an opportunity to work hands-on learning about the real, physical world around them. You give them proper resources and competent instruction in something the kids can relate to, and you wind up with students who want to learn.
You don't get this by just hiring more generic teachers, or paying poorly-performing teachers more money. Yes, you will have to pay teachers more in order to get good ones, but that also means you have to be willing to fire the bad ones and the useless parts of the administration.
You don't get this by just buying computers or random "technology" for students and simply expecting that jsut "doing it on a computer" will suddenly make hard topics easy. Used properly, computers and other advanced tech can greatly improve understanding and retention of material by presenting it in ways students can better understand (with animations, visuals, interactivity, etc), but simply throwing text onto a screen instead of a piece of paper doesn't do it.
You don't get this by social promotion and concern over feelings and self-esteem above all else. The real outside world isn't nearly so nice. That's not to say you need to be a cold, uncaring brute (especially to younger kids), but there need to be gradually-increasing responsibilities and expectations as they get older, and they should be treated more and more like adults as they grow. They need to be challenged, not coddled.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Fifth graders are far too soft and slippy to make anything useful out of.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Good point. My brother the anthropologist (and parent of two boys) says much the same. He also says that what we call "multitasking" is not so different from what "primivitive" hunters do in the forest (keep alert to a million little details).
-kgj
Engineers don't work in factories, troll...
People who work in factories are mostly drones or technicians at best (with an occasional engineer to...
I don't think you wrote what you meant. Let me edit it for you: "Engineers don't work in factories, except for when they do. Thankyou very much for your input to the discussion, here ends my respectful reply."
This is where BP's ideas are coming from
Hey, that's no way to talk about Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Uhmm, wow, quite the breath-taking swing of the logical generalization ax there man. As often happens though, this produces nothing but disconnected bullshit. The manufacturing engineer's at Stryker medical work right on the shop floor with the assembly techs. At ITW the seat heater project involved the engineer working on it hanging in right with us techs while we ran the tests. Civil Engineers are out at job sites to check and approve the results the tech's are getting from the geotechnical testing. The old roll of a P.E. stamping blueprints (prepared by a drafter and not them) is increasingly uncommon. Doesn't mean its a bad life though. Anyone with the intellectual toughness and agility to get an engineering degree is generally going to find an interesting life waiting for them. Just might not be in engineering.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Yeah exactly. What's even worse is this kind of nonsense is starting to infect mathematics as well! Math classes are filled with tired old cliches like calculating the sides of a triangle or the area of a circle, or learning algrebra. I say get these kids started coming up with a prove for the Riemann hypothesis, then let them go from there.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
That is the point of college. Everything up to high school mean nothing. This and engineers have special responsibilities on their shoulders and have undue responsibility for their actions. There is a reason you sometimes get an software engineer to program a piece of software instead of a standard programmer.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
My Dad had a sign on his desk that said, "Siks munths ago I coodnt even spel injuneer. Now I are one."
Start with teachers playing the role of overpaid coke-addicted managers & sales people with no ethics telling them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it (despite knowing less than the 5th graders). Move on to telling them to steal designs and cut corners on safety in order to meet a deadline for the quarterly numbers. Weather they pull it off or not then becomes irrelevant. Tell them they cost too much and that Chinese and Indian 5th graders can do better work for 1/10th of the cost. Send them home without recess or snack. That'll give them the real experience of any sort of engineering in the western world....
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
. There was a write up in the local paper and lots of enthusiasm. I would say that the goals of the program were not so much education as...
It was a lot of fun and well received. The next batch of sessions will cover:
.
So far it has not been too hard to avoid the conversation becoming religious, thankfully it has not become a big issue. I think the after school nature of the program and the fact that it covers things that are outside the curriculum releases a lot of pressure. I had intended that the presenters "aim high" with the subject matter and leave the kids that are interested to use their own initiative to find out more; and there is plenty of evidence that this is happening based on reports of classroom discussions and students telling me about the scratch programs they have created. It really is not an intent to directly teach anything, but I have come to believe that there are many subjects that seem unsuitable (such as relativity) but in fact are more hard to believe than hard to understand. I have also come to believe that the single biggest barrier to the schools working well is lack of parental involvement. Getting some parents to come to the school and join in any event is a huge undertaking and I think is the biggest potential benefit of a program like this.
Perhaps we should just get the PTA to open a bar at the school
.
Nullius in verba
This is a sad post, and even sadder that it was marked Insightful.
Yes, there are downsides to engineering, as there is in any industry (although engineers typically only see their own). However, please give me a good problem to solve, and a bunch of smart people to solve it with, over anything that some of the other majors involve. I love solving problems and getting things (software in my case) to work together. Some of my best college memories were the nights my friends and I would stay up and work on a difficult programming problem and achieve a great deal of satisfaction in doing so.
Yeah, there is the money issue (although, there are a number of engineers who have gone on to make a great deal of money), but, as Forrest Gump's mama said, "There is only so much money a man needs, and the rest is for showing off." At some point, you have to decide what is really most important to you and what it is that you enjoy doing.
Now I understand the new policy's 12:00pm to 12:30pm "lunch" 12:30pm - 2:00pm "Nap Time"
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
When people consider the kids ready for religion at kindergarten age, I don't see why they shouldn't be ready for science.
False analogy. Maybe you are trying to make a point, but geez, what a failx0r. Either you are trying to portrait religious people as dogmatic with an equally dogmatic (and erroneous) conclusion, or you are trying to prove the former to be an absurd by assuming the implication of the former with the later to be an absurd. Logic doesn't work that way. I'm amazed that people in /. actually voted that post as interesting. They pretty much become the mirror image of creationists when doing so.
Textbook writers and professors knew all along that this stuff was elementary.
May I recommend a book for this class?
Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems, 6th Edition
http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Differential-Equations-Boundary-Problems/dp/0471089559
by massive inflation. Weak dollar keep jobs inside USA, and that includes Engineering. No more excuses to outsource or to hire H1-Bs.
New Economic Perspectives
As oil gets more expensive, capitalists, entrepreneurs and other members of the "parasite class" will be take advantage of the opportunity created by high prices, and search for solutions. Many will fail, but in a free society, a solution will eventually be found, and energy prices will be reduced in long run. It's easy to see how this will happen due to the insane amount of solar energy that hits our planet every day (100's of times more than 15 billion Americans could use), as well as the extreme amount of uranium, thorium and other nuclear fuels. There is also a world-wide rescission and thus a labor surplus, as well as very large quantities of many elements such as iron, aluminium, and carbon. We will not head into a new age of energy efficiency, but a new age of growth and inefficiency. Prosperous times ahead. This economic growth will halt population growth.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
There's plenty of energy around. Enough is hitting my yard right now to power my house, fuel my car, desal my water, and make plastic. Why am I not using it? Because the devices I could buy to convert that energy into usable form are to expensive compared to oil, coal and gas. As business people and scientists improve those devices, energy will become cheaper and more available. The reason we could not get into space was a technical and regulatory issue - we had to settle for hydrogen-oxygen rockets, with 1000's of times less energy then the best fuel - uranium.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
I know http://www.fox.com/areyousmarter/ gameshow that is about to get a LOT harder!
Isn't kindergarten 5 year olds?
Fifth Graders are 10 year olds.
Which one is it?
Engineering used here is just a pretentious word for "how things work". All kids are interested in that ( see Richard Scary's book "How Things Work") and spending time in school on it in the early grades should be normal practice, surely.