STEM+X Futurists' Fair

This week our Year 5/6 students had the opportunity to present some of their big ideas to a panel of judges for the STEM+X Futurists' Fair. It was so wonderful for them to have an authentic audience; what a positive message for them that their voices matter and that there are people willing to listen to and believe in their ideas. I hope that it will be an experience that stays with them throughout life. 

Each group has been working on different STEM solutions for how they would help to improve Australia's future. This is one of the group's ideas:

"We love STEM because we get to do hands-on learning and solve real problems. We get to do the thinking for ourselves and learn about things we are interested in and passionate about."

"We learn about things that might help us in the future. We learn skills that will help us no matter what type of job we want, like working together and thinking critically."

"Thank you ABCN and NBN Co. This program has helped us to realise that we can use STEM to help our world to be a better place. We have learnt that we CAN make a difference in our own lives and the lives of others. We have learnt how to work together and how to compromise when we all had different ideas. We have learnt to be curious and to ask the big questions."

"We have become better problem-solvers and it has helped us to have more resilience when things don’t go the way we originally planned. We have learnt that mistakes are all part of the design process. We have learnt that our ideas are awesome!"

Futurists' Fair - Week 3

How can we help to reduce the impact that humans have on the environment?

Students pitched their ideas for the "big picture" problem that they want to solve for the Futurists' Fair. They voted and the majority of students agreed that the impact that humans have on the environment (mainly pollution) was the issue they would address. This is the collaborative video that a small group of students created to explain what their problem is and why it is important.

We are using the 6 Ds of Design Thinking as a framework for their problem-solving. Once they had decided on the problem it was time to brainstorm potential STEM solutions to their problem. This is where we DREAM and start to imagine and brainstorm possible solutions. It's usually the stage my classroom starts getting loud; there's a buzz of ideas and excitement and they really start to collaborate and build on each other's ideas. This is probably the part that is the most rewarding for me as a teacher, I walk around the room and marvel at the creativity, and step back to listen in to the critical thinking and problem-solving conversations students are having independently:

"But how would a waterproof robot work though, how would it would actually collect the rubbish without harming sea animals?"

"Well, maybe it would have a special filter that detects whether something is made of plastic. I guess I need to think a bit more."

"Who would use your product?"

"Is that realistic, could you really build it?"

"That is an awesome idea, can I work with you on that? I think we could make it go viral!"

The thing about student-led learning is that it often goes in a direction that I wouldn't have thought of! If it had been up to me as the teacher I probably would have chosen poverty or food security as the "big picture" problem; many of my students are directly impacted by poverty and I thought that would be quite empowering for them. Then I really liked one of the pollution ideas, that we could help lessen the impact of air pollution by creating protective domes. Students would come up with a way to keep the dome at the ideal temperature for growing trees and/or food sources. But the student who came up with that idea also had plenty more ideas and he chose to go down a different direction.

Perhaps that's one of the things that excites me about teaching STEM, I can never predict where our learning will take us and I'm always pleasantly suprised by the outcome!

Here are some of the ideas that students have decided to develop further:

   

Once students had some ideas about what they might like to create as a STEM solution, we went back to the “Discover” stage of the design thinking process, where they thought about the user of the solution. They used canva to create empathy maps to think about what the users see, say, hear, think and feel.

This is the empathy map that one group created:

"The Recycle Dash App is aimed towards young people our age and older. We thought that it could also appeal to anyone who likes playing interactive games on their phones, so maybe families could get involved too."

Computational Thinking

What is computational thinking? I just created a brief presentation for teacher PD to explain some of the key concepts of computational thinking. I think the simplest explanation is that computational thinking = solving problems logically!

Powtoon is a great online tool to use to create short videos. My presentation is embedded below, but it may take a moment to load. The other resource that I used in this presentation was Bebras 365. I included two of their past questions as examples of problems that require computational thinking.


 

Futurists' Fair - Week 2

Prior to beginning our second week of the Futurists' Fair project, I wanted to link this work to the professional development I participated in at STEM X Academy with CSIRO future scenarios. As a whole class group, the Year 5/6s looked at a few short videos produced by CSIRO and then unpacked some information from CSIRO's report, Australia 2030: Navigating our uncertain future. This report details a scenarios-based outlook for Australia's future.

I then used the future scenarios as prompts for small group discussions, and this helped to tune students into the “bigger picture” of problems we face now and in the future at a local and more global level. The main scenario students looked at was about 'Planetary Pushback' and the impact that humans are having on the environment.  Some students had expressed interest in invasive species, so they looked at environmental impacts. Students had some very deep and interesting discussions, I loved being a fly on the wall! The future scenario work was a really effective way to tap into the problems that concern my students, the big questions and worries that they have about their future world and how they would solve those issues.

For the second stage of our Futurists' Fair work, I made a quick "flipped classroom" video using the student app Seesaw to set the stage. I wanted students to choose just one idea that they felt passionate about and come up with a quick persuasive presentation to convince others to vote for their idea. To save time, I borrowed some animation clips from CSIRO's Australian National Outlook video for my background:

Students were able to decide whether they would prefer to work alone or in a small group for this component of the project. We used post-it notes to list what they were most passionate about and would like to work on. This process helped students to form groups with people that had the same 'big ideas'. We noticed that most ideas fit into four main categories: Poverty/homelessness, Endangered Species, Human impact on pollution and climate change and Invasive species. 

All of my students ended up finding someone that had a similar idea and got to work researching their problem. Things didn't quite go to plan! My students were so invested in their research and persuasive presentations that I allowed them to keep going for two whole lessons (rather than the initial 30 minutes I had planned for!). When students are intrinsically motivated and engaged in their learning, I think it's really important to allow them that extra time for them to go deeper with the learning... so week 2 turned into week 3! 

Students presented their ideas for the problem they would like to solve for the Futurists' Fair. We had two teachers and the rest of the class acting as a "shark tank panel" to provide feedback on their presentation skills. Students then voted for two ideas (their own and one other!). They tallied up the results and found that pollution scraped in as the winner by 3 points! A small group of students then worked on creating a video for our class to present at the Futurists' Fair.

Futurists' Fair: Week 1

Following on from ABCN's STEM+X Workshop, our Year 5/6 students will participate in a class project over a 4-6 week period. This class project will then be presented to a panel of judges via video conference: The Futurists' Fair.

For the Futurists' Fair, students need to come up with an idea that will brighten Australia's future.  It can be a new product, improvement to an existing product, experiment or invention. They need to use their STEM skills and abilities to develop this idea and show the judges how it will have a positive impact and improve the future of Australia in some way.

So in our first session, my amazing students brainstormed and then shared the problems that matter to them. Most of these students are 10 years old; I love how passionate they are about their world and their futures, but it hurts my heart that these are the issues that 10 year old children are concerned about:

In our next session students will finish adding their ideas to the padlet above, and then pitch their ideas to the whole group. Students will vote on one larger issue that they will all tackle, and then they will work together in small groups to create their solutions.

I can't wait to see what they come up with.  These are our change makers; watch this space!

STEM Student Workshop with business mentors

Some very exciting things happening in the world of STEM at our school! Yesterday our students participated in a STEM workshop developed by the ABCN (Australian Business and Community Network) and NBN CO (National Broadband Network). In the afternoon, ABCN delivered a parent seminar to our school community. Following on from the workshop our students will be involved in an Australia-wide competition: The Futurists' Fair.

Students working together to play Pacman with a Makey Makey Invention Kit

First, some background info: ABCN partners business with education through structured programs, which involve corporate volunteers mentoring students. Their focus is to improve the opportunities and outcomes for students and schools most in need. "Every year we work with over 200 public schools across Australia to deliver a range of critical employability, leadership and skill-building mentoring programs. These schools are typically priority-funded and located in low socio-economic status (SES) communities."

Our NBN Co. mentor telling us about his work and passion for STEM education

"In partnership with the National Broadband Network, ABCN has developed the STEM+X workshop to highlight the importance of STEM in everyday life... Underlying the workshop will be a focus on STEM+X - with the 'X' representing the children's passions and interests. NBN CO and ABCN believe all Australian children, regardless of their economic, religious and cultural backgrounds should be encouraged to enjoy STEM. STEM will be integral to their future employability and enjoyment of the world around them."

Yesterday was our program launch and 30 of our Year 5/6 students participated in a STEM workshop. Throughout the day we also had media visit us. Students were very excited the next day when they'd seen themselves on a local news station and heard their radio interview!

The first part of the workshop involved students in a one minute brainstorm of the many uses of a paperclip. Some ideas included mini kebab holder, belt clip and fishing hook.  A few too many students had ideas about opening locks and using it as a vandalism/graffiti tool! They then had another minute to come up with all of the ways you couldn't use a paperclip. Some of their ideas: You can't fly with it, can't use it as shelter from rain, can't drive it and can't use it as underwear.

Students then had their first experience with a Makey Makey invention kit. With a Makey Makey, students can make any conductive material act as the input device for a computer.

Students then worked together in teams using the design thinking process. Their challenge was to design an app that would improve our school.  

 

They then presented their ideas to the rest of the class. Students came up with some wonderful ideas in a short time, and some of them are keen to take their app ideas further!  We had a great day and are all looking forward to starting our work on the Futurists' Fair project.

Winter Olympics

For the first two STEM lessons of the year, Grade 5-6 students have been working in teams to create a solution to a Winter Olympics design challenge. Students voted on the Winter Olympics theme and the question they chose to tackle was:  How can you use the materials provided to design and build a ski lift chair?

Students decided that the criteria they would use to test and evaluate the success of their designs would be a time-trial/race with the fastest ski chairs being awarded gold, silver and bronze places. As well as needing to be the fastest ski chair, their mini person also needed to stay inside their chair and arrive "safely" at the bottom of the "ski lift".

During our first testing phase one design was very fast!
Gold Medal: 3 seconds
Silver Medal: 23 seconds
Bronze: 27 seconds

We saw some fabulous team work and heard plenty of group discussions about the force of friction and which materials they thought would help to improve their designs.

 

First test: This design was awarded a "gold medal" for taking 3 seconds to travel down