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BELLEVUE, Washington-
Today the class is in the middle of a unit on magnetic levitation, the principle that allows the bullet trains of Japan to reach speeds of 310 miles per hour. Students are at all stages in the process of designing, building, testing, and documenting the performance and characteristics of a MagLev vehicle shaped from a 2-1/2'' x 2'' x 6'' piece of balsa wood. "We're trying to get it aerodynamic," says one student, sanding furiously at his block of wood. "Frank, come here Frank, check out the drag," shouts another student as he peers at his vehicle through the window of a wind tunnel. A small group of boys and girls clusters around a stretch of track to witness the maiden voyage of a red-and-black, cigar-shaped car. The car-velcroed to a flat, rectangular plastic platform with four magnets on its underside-is levitated by opposing magnets in the track. Externally powered by a two-second burst of air, the aerodynamic but impractically shaped vehicle travels an impressive 24 feet, 7 inches. At 10:53 a.m., a chorus of "Clean up, clean up" arises, and there's a flurry of activity as students push brooms, put away tools, and turn off machinery. After a four-minute break, Crane is back at work. The next section of Tech Ed-his third of the day-begins in the adjoining "clean room," which houses computer terminals, a Quick Cam digital camera, video monitors, design drawings, and models. At this school, Technology Education-a required class for all seventh-graders- is where low tech and high tech meet. Here, students lay hands on every kind of tool-from wrench to wind tunnel, from drill press to data base, from screwdriver to digital camera. "There's an image of Tech Ed as what used to be called shop," says Crane, recalling that when he began teaching at Highland 13 years ago his students made ice scrapers and oven hooks from patterns and plans. "Whereas shop was a really valid program at the time, Technology Education is a lot more valid now. It takes a problem-solving approach rather than a project-making approach." Documentation, including electronic documentation, is a major piece of the new approach, as is evident in the MagLev project. Over the last three years, Crane's Tech Ed classes have built up a MagLev vehicle database containing close to 400 entries. Today most students are just creating a file and entering the basics-name, class period, student number. Later they will enter their vehicle's weight, the drag it created in the wind tunnel, a drag rating (a ratio between the drag on the MagLev vehicle and the greater drag created by the original, unshaped block of wood), and the distance the vehicle traveled on the track. To round out their database entry they will snap a Quick Cam photo of their finished, painted creation. "When the computer end of things came in as part of this project, one of my goals was to model the use of technology," says Crane. "Every student in seventh-grade Tech Ed will be using technology to gather information." Though he has done the MagLev project without the electronic tools found in the clean room, Crane finds the database a powerful motivator for his students. Early in the project, before students begin brainstorming design ideas, he can project data and images from previous years onto his two video monitors. Students can see how former students-such as students' older brothers and sisters-have solved the problem, and what kind of performance results they achieved. Initially, Crane was concerned that students would want to duplicate the most successful designs in the database, but this hasn't been a problem. He tells his students, "That may be a beginning point. He did OK, but you can do better" and "I'd hate to say that that's the way to do it when you have a better idea." The shared database has the potential to extend the MagLev project outside the school. Crane has already collaborated with an instructor at Tillicum Middle School, also in Bellevue, on a unit on bridge design. In a database shared between the two schools, students entered digital photographs of truss-style bridges they built from 25 pieces of 1/4'' x 1/4'' x 13'' pine wood. They recorded each bridge's weight, the type of adhesive used, the weight load at which the bridge failed, and the strength-to-weight ratio. "This was really a motivator, because kids wanted to make sure their bridge would beat Tillicum's," says Crane. "Because it was going on concurrently, the kids would just come in and go 'I want to go online. Did they get any more in?' and 'Where are we now?'" Ideally, Tech Ed classes in the district's five middle schools, and even from schools beyond, would feed information into the shared database, says Crane. However, it takes more than an electronic connection to make meaningful links between schools. Crane and his colleague have not been able to coordinate the MagLev project because of differences in test equipment. Tillicum has a more sophisticated wind tunnel and track set-up than Highland; therefore, student test results would not be comparable. Even the bridge design project, for which the two instructors strove to standardize their test equipment, cannot always be done simultaneously because of scheduling differences-Highland is on semesters, Tillicum on trimesters. But Crane is convinced that the effort required to set up computer-based projects and solve practical difficulties pays off in the long run. "Using instructional technology in a project like this makes for a much better project," he says. "Because it's computer based, it's easy to adjust and modify to meet new needs." For example, Crane notes that as the projects evolved, he added new information categories and the digital photos to the MagLev and bridge databases. "Once you get past the frustrations, the final project is well worth it."
On the assignment:
On the software:
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This document's URL is: Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: Northwest Education | People | Products & Publications | Topics © 2001 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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TEACHER'S
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