Wed Jan 11

Wed Jan 18

Wed Jan 25 – Initial project ideas should be submitted.

Wed Feb 1 – Students worked on project goals.

Wed Feb 8 – Next week the first BUILD must be complete.  Students should be ready to present their progress to the class.  Each student filled out a summary form for their project.  Watched a video about a design-build project to develop low cost filters for African village water supplies.  Shows how practical these kinds of projects can be.  Also shows the relationship between science, technology and society.

Wed Feb 15 – First Trial was DUE!  Students gave presentations about their projects.  Each student had to describe their project in terms of

• Design – 1 sentence statement that summarizes their project and then described their goals: What is the project supposed to DO (goals must be specific, measurable, challenging, achievable and written down)  Most students needed to get alot more specific in their goals and define their terms more carefully.  For example: what does it mean if they said their car needed to go “straight?”  Is 1 foot off-center straight or not?  Does it need to go 10m before you measure how far off it is or only 10 feet? etc.
• Build – Each student showed their device and demonstrated what it could do. Projects should be physically present and in working order.  Projects are judged on what they can do at the time of demonstration (every 3 weeks approximately)
• Test – Each student discussed how they tested their device.  What exactly did they measure.  This brought up the need to be recording EVERYTHING in lab notebooks.  We discussed the rules to keeping a good lab notebook.
• Evaluate – how does the actual performance (see test) compare to the stated goals?  Students must be able to explain what their device does well, what it does poorly and specifically where they intend to show improvement between this weed and the next deadline (March 7th).j
• Here is the grade sheet we used to evaluate projects.

Round 2 Planning Document