VSTE

Virginia Society for Technology in Education

science

KidWind- A Makerspace STEM Initiative

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As a retired K-12 teacher and member of a community makerspace called Makersmiths, I volunteer as an educational liaison, working with families seeking opportunities for their children to become involved in STEM activities. One of Makersmiths initiatives is the KidWind-Virginia Challenge. During the 2018-2019 school year, I volunteered with two other Makersmiths members to sponsor two KidWind teams.

The teams learned about wind energy, how to design, create and test their blades on turbine stands. They learned to use multimeters and a Vernier Go Direct Sensor that uses Graphical Analysis software to determine their wind turbines’ energy production. At the spring 2019 KidWind-Virginia challenge event, the high school team won first place with their 3D printed blades and homemade generator producing the most energy and the middle school team earned two awards for their knowledge of wind energy initiatives, and for best documented blade design development.

photo of a high school maker project photo of a maker project, a large fan

Excited about their KidWind Challenge successes, our middle school students wanted to learn Tinkercad to design new blades and use 3D printers and a laser printer to construct blades for the 2020 wind turbine competition.

photo of student working at computer photo of wind turbine project

However, COVID-19 postponed the competition until spring 2021. We still held weekly meetings using Google Meet to offer advice as students completed their KidWind projects at home. I built the KidWind Challenge website to provide the students with information they needed to know about wind turbines. Since the middle school students also wanted to compete in the 2021 Kidwind Solar Structure Challenge, I built a solar structure website, too.

The students experimented with items such as solar panels, LEDs, switches, fans and water pumps found in their KidWind solar kits obtained from the JMU’s Center for the Advancement of Sustainable Energy (CASE) that sponsors KidWind-Virginia. The five middle school students eventually formed three teams that won first, second and third place awards in the middle school KidWind-VA 2021 Solar Structure Challenge. What were their projects?

photo of maker projectFirst place winners Connor, Caleb and Soren wanted to build a Kiosk solar project that contains a sound box. The sound box detects movement and plays a train sound whenever someone walks by it.  The purpose of the sound is to catch the attention of that person and draw them back to the kiosk to read displayed information.

In order for sound box batteries to remain charged, the boys used three rechargeable batteries wired to two solar panels on a platform at the top of the kiosk. Tilted at an optimal angle to capture the direct sunlight during spring and summer, the panel can also be manually rotated to follow the sun.

photo of water filtering projectSecond place winner Katie wanted to find a way to filter pond or stream water to use when watering plants. She created a water filtering system that uses a fish tank with a charcoal filter, two water pumps and three solar panels on a platform that can be adjusted to obtain the optimum angle to capture direct sunlight at different times of the year. The solar panels operate the two water pumps.

photo of project illustrating electrolysisThird place winner Sofi figured out a way to use solar power to run an electrolysis system that separates hydrogen from oxygen in water. The hydrogen would power vehicles instead of using fossil fuels. She first used batteries to produce power to run her electrolysis system, then she switched to using solar power.

When thinking about what our students learned completing KidWind projects, many academic areas come to mind. Students used mathematics to measure when building projects and when completing their experiments, kept a journal to document the scientific data they were collecting, and wrote their procedures and results for judges to read. They had to collaborate to problem-solve and use their oral communication skills to create videos showing their projects in action. Most of all, our students developed maker skills and learned quite a bit about clean energy initiatives.

We would like to start a blog for VSTE members to share their makerspace initiatives. Perhaps you want to ask questions about how to establish a makerspace that ties into STEM initiatives? Let us know what you are thinking or wanting to ask!

Written by Diane D. Painter. Diane is a retired Fairfax County K-12 special education teacher. She teaches curriculum and instruction courses at Shenandoah University and volunteers as an educational liaison at Makersmiths, Inc., a non-profit makerspace in Loudoun County, VA. You can contact Diane through the Makersmiths website.

Ed Tech Magic for Real World Sci-Phy Learning

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"Yes!"

"Let's do it!"

"We want to try this!"

"I saw this cool thing on Twitter and I am going to try it with my kids tomorrow!"

Two students working on a science experimentThese answers are the phrases that every instructional coach craves to hear from the teachers in her school, especially when they are accompanied by passion for learning, contagious smiles, and positive attitude. Mr. Ryan Kurpiel and Mrs. Jenn Vedder are the educators who serve a healthy dose of their enthusiasm for learning every day to their students in their Sci-Phy (Science and Physical Education), Biology, and Health and Physical Education courses at Bayside High School in Virginia Beach, VA.

Jenn Vedder, a health and physical education teacher, and Ryan Kurpiel, a science teacher, are a dynamic team in their first year of co-teaching a course that combines biology and health and physical education curricula. The concept is rooted in the simple fact that teaching cross-curricular courses like this helps create more authentic and deeper learning experiences for students.

"As teachers, we are given the task of helping our students become 21st Century learners and to do that, we need to change the way we teach to meet our students' needs", explains Mrs. Vedder. Mrs. Vedder and Mr. Kurpiel have found what seems to be the perfect balance of tech-intensive projects and device-free learning.

Each lesson in their Sci-Phy class includes a carefully planned combination of individual and small group activities that Students gathering data on a cow at the farm.effectively incorporate student voice and choice. For example, Mrs. Vedder framed one of the projects with student choice options as a game of Fortnite with Google Slides. Talk about generating student interest! Mr. Kurpiel tasked the students with showing what they know about infectious diseases by designing a brochure with a publishing tool of their choice and incorporating the information into a patient and medical professionals interaction skit. The students were the main decision makers on the requirements of the project and excellent peer reviewers. The 9th graders recorded their CPR practice sessions and posted those videos on a shared Padlet for review. Another time, Mr. Kurpiel and Mrs. Vedder pushed the limits of the schoolís Wi-Fi when they took their students on a treasure hunt around the campus with virtual submission checkpoints through Actionbound App.

This lesson was a cross-curricular activity to prepare the students for the field trip to the local cattle farm. The focus for health curriculum was disaster preparedness. At the same time, the students showed mastery of objectives on orienteering for Advanced Placement Human Geography and lifesaving skills and the use of antiseptics vs. antibiotics for Biology. Often, the students are the experts in room and the teachers and the classmates are their grateful audience. How could anyone not get excited for a

Student demonstrating a yoga pose.

student-led lesson on yoga or a Taekwondo practice with a nationally ranked Taekwondo Black Belt? However, the list of examples of effective use of Google Apps for Education, FlipGrid, Padlet, MySimpleShow, Canva, Piktochart, Schoology, and

many more educational technology resources does not fully describe how much fun Mrs. Vedder's and Mr. Kurpiel's students have while learning and making important real-life connections with the community and each other.

The most inspiring part of these teachers' approach to their instruction is how much they plan for the needs of the whole child. Brain breaks, team building, social-emotional development, new community experiences and field trips do not always require technology, but they do certainly require teachers who work tirelessly and creatively for the well-being of their students. Moreover, the pride and joy that Mrs. Vedder and Mr. Kurpiel have for their students shine through in every one of their Google Photos albums, every newsletter, and every Tweet. It is quite hard to believe that both of these exceptional individuals are finishing their third year as full-time teachers! As an instructional technology specialist, I feel privileged and honored to witness such vibrant teaching with and without technology.

Mrs. Vedder generously shares her students' work on her website https://sites.google.com/vbschools.com/coachvhpe/sci-phy and via Twitter @CoachVedder_HPE. Mr. Kurpiel is also on Twitter @I_Teach_Life.

Written by Tatiana Kasyanik, an Instructional Technology Specialist at Bayside High School in Virginia Beach, VA. Tatiana can be found on Twitter @rus_eng_teacher.