In the Spirit of the Game

I am not sure how I feel about today's lesson. On one hand students found creative ways to accomplish the task. On the other hand, there was no elegance or artistry to their work. Even now I am surprised with myself at how disappointed I am. The assignment was to create a wind powered vehicle that would move forward. They had limited time and materials and I wanted all students to feel that they could definitely succeed at making it go forward at least a little bit. I thought this would encourage them to take risks and do something creative knowing that if they had an even half way descent design it would be move a little. Instead what I got was the opposite. Very little thought and a "what is the quickest way we can do this to meet the requirements" mentality. I am not sure if it's just the nature of the classes or if the word spread on "the easy way" to do it but by the end of the day all I had were balloons taped to straws with a piece of paper acting as a "wing". It was pathetic from an aesthetic standpoint and severely limited their chance of going the furthest. For me, rarely do I find myself just "doing enough" but really wanting to be first. They were looking for completion, I was looking for excellence. On a positive side, with the exception of 2-3 cases, there was lots of collaboration and discussion going on and everyone enjoyed themselves. Hopefully that will be the take away, but to be honest, I am seriously considering revising my windmill lesson for next week. If I have to create a 1 page list of requirements of do's and don'ts, it is not worth it to me. I need them to want to succeed, but do so with a little creativity.

A little bit of creativity. They ended up redoing the wheels after seeing the cardboard didn't work very well.

Getting ready at the starting line.

*12/10 update. We had our county spontaneous science competition which is more of an engineering competition but whatever, we had fun with it. AND WE ROCKED IT. I couldn't stay to the end but I did get to see the chair competition. They were given a months worth of newspapers, tape, poster paper, string, and a 12x12 carboard "seat". One school decided to stack all their papers together and wrap them in duct tape. Then the next school over came to the same conclusion. Then a third school which had previously been building something like a chair, tore it all down and stacked their paper together with minor modifications to get the height bonus points. I was so proud our team stuck to their plan and actually created something with a bit more creativity and engineering (and a whole lot less material) which ultimately won them the event!