Partners: Eadin Wang and Vera Zhong
Initial brainstorm of many different ideas
Background
For our STEM Accessibility midterm we were tasked with creating a STEM experience for a child in the second grade. The experiences were developed in groups and all four projects were displayed together on one display.
We have been learning a lot about teaching pedagogy and methodology. Here’s a quick overview of the concepts we’ve covered in class so far:
Monetssori = child-led activities (“work”) in classrooms with children of varying ages and teachers who encourage independence
Instructionism = teaching by instruction
Constructionism = learning by making
Socio-cultural learning = development is influenced by social interaction, language, and culture
Sensory = learning through active engagement of one’s senses
It seems pretty obvious that children (and people) learn better from experiencing and doing rather than just listening or watching, so that was our aim with this collaborative display.
Idea
I have been helping assist Jeff Feddersen’s undergraduate Energy course this semester and we’ve been building up this circuit that transforms kinetic into electrical energy. By turning the shaft of a motor it becomes a generator which outputs an oscillating signal. If we create a circuit that pipes that sinusoidal signal into a rectifier, we get a DC output we can use to power stuff, like LEDs! With some added guidance from Jeff, I was able to modify the circuit to incrementally light up an LED at a time and added a large capacitor to store the generated energy. This cool video Jeff made really illustrates the power of kinetic energy!
Now that we had identified an interesting STEM concept it was time to think of how to make it into an experience. It seemed pretty obvious that we needed to put a handle on the shaft of the motor to make it easier to turn, but how could we motivate children to WANT to turn it? An initial idea I had was attaching the handle to a gear that would also turn when a child turned the handle. Maybe there would also be other gears in different sizes that the child could install and see how the movement and speed changed with different types of gears? We ultimately decided against this idea because it seemed like too many complex concepts at once. Why were we including the gear math? What did it add to the experience and the concept we were trying to teach?
We decided to put our circuit in the context of stars. Constellations are like circuits in the way that they need to be complete loops, every star counts. With this added context, the LEDs became stars and we were hoping that the child would be motivated to try and light them all up and complete the constellation.
Initial design and schematic
Breadboard prototype
Process
Though I had the circuit prototype working weeks in advance because of my involvement in that class, the build was rushed because our portion of the display was completed in one day. I didn’t really get as many process shots as I normally do. Mostly it was a lot of painting anyway, so not much to look at.
I think the main thing we struggled with was the physical display. The shape and size was defined and designed by our teachers. The shape was unconventional and multiple groups were sharing the same panel of wood so it took some logistics to get the display assembled. Seeing the finished display, I see the vision now! I do really like how it pops off the wall and how the different sections come together in the middle panel.
All we had really planned for was the constellation. We didn’t realize how big of a space we were given for our experience. We had to think on the fly how we were going to use the extra space and what texts/words/instructions we found necessary. I wish we had taken more time to craft the wording and design of our experience because we’ve learned that those kinds of things can be really important to learning and spending time with an object or activity.
Circuit glued to the back of the wood panel
Painted constellation with LEDs
Final Product
Evaluation
We had 2 sessions of 3 kids total come in and tryout our display. Part of the assignment was to make a rubric and evaluate how the child interacted with our experience and understood the concepts being exhibited, but I think we were all burnt out in the end so I didn’t do this too officially.
In summary, the first session had a participant that was a bubbly and sociable girl. She had quite a bit of energy and seemed excited to get all the LEDs to light up. The second session was two siblings who were more reserved and their parents stayed and watched them. They were more hesitant to go crazy with turning the handle.
The main thought I have for how our play test went is that we designed our experience to only do one thing, there’s only one way to physically interact with it, so the children didn’t spend as much time with it as the other experiences. I’m not really sure if that’s a good or bad thing. I’m also unsure if made our teaching approach less effective. Did they even clock the change in energy? I’m not sure kids brains think like that. Also after the first session, we decided to add the muscle and lightbulb graphics to sort of illustrate the kinetic to electrical energy transformation more clearly. I’m unsure if the kids even noticed, but it was a relief to me to have the concept outlined on the display.
Overall, I’m really proud of our STEM experience and our whole class because the I think the whole exhibit looks so good and like a professional school bulletin board!