• Developed program to promote Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics for students in sixth to eighth grade

1. Structures Team
CONNOR BLAKENEY, FRANK CIONGOLI, ALEX CIAMBOTTI, DAN PFEIFER-KELLY
E DESIGN 100 – SECTION 8

2. Roadmap to our Solution
 What is our goal? (recognize opportunity)
 What we found? (gather info)
 What do specifically need to accomplish? (specifications)
 Possible ideas? (brainstorming)
 How do our ideas stack up against each other? (evaluation)
 What are we offering as our final product? (analysis)
 What will it look like? (test prototype/communicate design)

3. What is our goal?

4. Mission statement
 We are in the business of designing an activity that can educate
children in grades 6-8 in STEM concepts, specifically through or
about structure

5. What is the opportunity we have
been afforded?
 In recent decades the US has been falling behind the rest of the
world in STEM education, as evidence by standardized tests. Our
goal is to provide a system that will give
teachers the tools they need to educate
their students in these fields.
 Science and math from grades 6-8 do
not have any focus on the concepts and
ideas needed for engineering.
 Convince students that engineering is
heuristic
Source

6. What we found

7. Surveys said…
 We learned from teachers and students that children learned better
whenever they were interested in what they were doing
 Children were most interested in activities whenever they were
interactive
 Through asking the students directly we were able to discern which
parts of their science and math classes they found the most difficult
 Polled teachers to find out what their students struggled with the
most
 The one most relevant to structures was measurements and conversions

8. What do we need to do?
 Well we are going to create an interactive virtual setting in which
students learn how to apply parts of the curriculum to real world
scenarios.
 We feel that knowing how to apply complex ideas to something
tangible is the first step to developing the engineers of tomorrow

9. Technical Aspects
 3 modules that teach a specific item from the PA cirriculum
 The ideas learned in these 3 modules will be applied in a final
cumulative challenge

10. Zeroing in…

11. Specifications
 1. Kids actively participate. Holds attention for duration of a standard class (45
minutes at a time).
2. Teaches the educational objectives of converting measurements (2.3.8.D),
compare how a product system developed for one environment may be applied to
another setting (3.4.8.A3), analyze factors that determine structural design (3.4.8.E7).
We assume objectives are learned if they “pass” the challenge.
3. Competitive between students. There is a sense of competition between peers
that motivates kids to continue playing and continue learning. This can be done
through a scoreboard system that keeps track of every students performance and
positively reinforces the best performers.
4. The difficulty can adjust to accommodate the different levels of students. After
beating the initial challenge the student can choose from 3 higher levels to
challenge themselves.
5. Easily understood. The students can grasp the goal of the challenge after a brief
explanation (approx. 5 minutes at most).
6. Is not too computer intensive. Some schools computers are not very high end, so
we don’t want a challenge that is too intensive on the CPU. Can run on 4 GB RAM,
Win7 and XP both x64 and x86, dual core processors. A low-end computer should be
able to run the program without error.

12. How Our Specifications stack up
against each other

13. What we came up
with

14. Interactions with the other systems

15. Brainstormed Modules
1. Measurements and conversions (game)
 Cannon launch game
 Sled riding sandbox
 Helicopter adventure
 Crane drop game
2. Compare how a product or system or environment developed for one setting may be applied to
another setting (experimentation)
 3d experimentation interface
 2d experimentation interface
 Real world situation simulator
3. Analyze factors that determine structural design (video)
 Interactive video
 Non-interactive video
 Written text

16. Brainstormed Challenges
 Build and test a bridge
 Build a disaster-proof house
 Repair a hole in the roof of the virtual house

17. Which Ideas were best?

18. Module Evaluations
Table 1 Game matrix
Table 2 video matrix
Table 3 experimentation matrix

19. Evaluating our challenges
Table 4 Challenge Matrix

20. So what did we end up with?
 We ended up with a system that uses 3 base modules to teach 3
educational objectives from the state curriculum, and a final
challenge that ties them all together and gets the kids to use critical
thinking skills.
 The 3 modules are the 3d experimentation interface, the interactive
video and the game
 Our final challenge for the students is having them build a bridge under
certain constraints and conditions.

21. So what does it look like?
Fig. 1 Helicopter game
We don’t have to ask to convert distance, the students could
convert from mph to m/s, for example.
Teaches objective 2.3.8.D in state curriculum.
Fig 2 Video module
Teaches about educational objective analyze factors
that determine structural design (3.4.8.E7).
Fig. 3 3d experimentation
module.
Kids can change materials and forces applied
easily. Teaches objective 3.4.8.A3 “compare
how a product system developed for one
environment may be applied to another
setting”

22. The Final Challenge
Fig 4 Bridge Challenge
Students have to make a bridge
under a certain monetary constraint
among other variables.

23. Wrapping Things Up

24. Our Timeline

25. References
 PA Academic Standards for Science and Technology
 http://static.pdesas.org/content/documents/Academic_Standards_for_
Science_and_Technology_and_Engineering_Education_(Elementary).pd
f
 PA Academic Standards for Math
 http://static.pdesas.org/content/documents/Academic_Standards_for_
Mathematics_(Elementary).pdf

26. Questions?