First Grade & Senior Academy Students Create Playhouses!
Senior Academy IDC students work alongside Elementary Academy students to design and build a playhouse that could be sold at our annual DESIGNORAMA festival to benefit a local non-profit benefiting the homeless population in Atlanta. This is the next project in the series of vertical PBL.
First grade students helped the Senior Academy students identify research questions and provided insight into things kids might enjoy in a playhouse design. The Senior Academy IDC students listened to feedback and created concept sketches that showed dimensions. Next the IDC students made several iterations of their scale models. The First grade students voted on the design that they felt best represented the needs of students that might use the playhouse. After the vote, the winning design drawn in CAD. Students from both academies are currently building the structures.
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We plan to have our culminating event during DESIGNORAMA. Students will offer their two playhouses for silent auction during the event and proceeds will go to a non-profit that the students select.
Drew Design Takes on the Maker Faire!
For this project, the students were challenged to respond to the Driving Question: How can we make our booth an attractive and memorable experience for our visitors? Additionally, this project was a perfect pilot for vertical PBL (big kids working with little kids) at Drew.
Our IDC (Senior Academy) students drove the Engineering Design Process, while mentoring 1st graders through project research, and soliciting information about 1st graders interests when considering products to sell. The 1st graders voted on their favorite designs based on the ideas presented by the IDC students. “Ooweey Gooey,” and “MineCraft Toys” were selected! After the vote, the IDC students continued with the design process. They prototyped their product, and then did “product testing” with the 1st graders. From product testing, they identified specific improvements that they needed to make to their products before going into production. After solving the issued identified through testing, the students determined unit costs, and went into production! The culminating event of the project was the Atlanta Maker Faire. Each class had their own booth at the Maker Faire, and they mentored the 1st graders through their customer service process while servicing their customers! In total, $518 was raised for the Drew Design program! For more information on booths, please look for “Ooweey Gooey” and “Time to Mine,” at: http://makerfaireatl.com/2015-makers/ . |
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Students Study Transportation
Kindergarten and first grade students in Engineering Design class have studied transportation. They created their own dream car and then studyied airplanes. Their task was to design planes that are meant to accomplish different jobs: a cargo/passenger plane, a military style fighter plane, and a stunt plane. Students have done research about flight: learning about DaVinci and the Wright Brothers, the forces that act on air planes, and have visited Dobbins Air Force Base for a first hand examination (Please check out our video below to see our amazing experience. Many thanks to the 94th Airlift Wing at Dobbins Air Force Base!).
Students made their planes and tested them for their flight worthiness. Students watched for distance traveled and other distinguishing characteristics of a plane's flight. Students were allowed to make adjustments and test the plane again to see if it met the desired outcome.
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