[Ohiogift] My 2 centsRe: STEM with LEGOS

Sat Sep 15 11:27:34 EDT 2012

I can see both sides of this issue.  This type of discussion came up years ago on ohiogiftlist regarding these types of events such as Science Olympiad.  I am a retired aerospace engineer, so I have some empathy with the technical and scientific field.

As I mentioned years ago, the showy competitive stuff in schools can sometimes gloss over or band-aid the basic infrastructure problems of students being challenged or growing in a well thought out, well designed, well implemented day to day, year to year curriculum whether its history, science, math or whatever.

I think we see that when we overdo varsity sports instead of conducting quality physical education for all students, show choirs and competitive marching band instead of quality music education, Science Olympiad/Legos/science fairs for a quality science education, etc. 

We tend to be a superficial, celebrity, cosmetic, showy culture when it comes to a lot of things, including our education system.  We rot from within.  Boards, administrators, and superintendents overreward and overrecognize employees for the showy events as a public relations spin with the community.  Who gets more pay and recognition - the high school athletics director or the history and science teacher"?  The top athletes or the top science students and historians?  Our college and K-12 education systems have helped build the superficial "look at me" culture".   "Look, Dick, see Jane run".

A strong, culture values quiet, less noisy, less showy dedication and hard work such as you get from scientific study or writing a quality research paper.  I blame the public and the education leaders as much if not more than teachers for what our education atmosphere has become.  I think serious classroom teachers have felt compelled to out showdog and out compete the other things schools get involved in just to gain a student's, a parent's, a board's, a superintendent's attention for their area and gain resources.

Mary Collier
-----Original Message-----
From: Gagel, Shannon <sgagel at aurora-schools.org>
To: Will Fitzhugh <fitzhugh at tcr.org>
Cc: ohiogift <ohiogift at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Sat, Sep 15, 2012 10:18 am
Subject: Re: [Ohiogift] STEM with LEGOS

Please don't be so short sighted that you can't see a good program because it sounds like a toy. 
Engineering? Check.  Math? Physics? Check in some aspects.  Technology? Absolutely.  First Lego League is an excellent problem solving competition that truly involves kids in programming, research, collaboration and gracious professionalism.  It doesn't cover all scientific topics, but it does truly involve kids in a rich experience of finding a problem related to a topic (this year's theme is senior solutions- looking for ways to help our senior population) and discovering possible solutions, pitfalls, financial aspects, etc.  To do this, students must also learn to be better researchers and to write on the topic to communicate their ideas to judges. Though this program in past years, my students have researched problems in transportation, biomedical engineering, and food contamination.  They have skyped with state officials about keeping strawberries safer and cancer researchers about the feasibility of using magnets and nanobots to produce a cure for cancer.  They have learned about credible resources and the immense amount of junk you can find on the internet.  Oh, and these students were in 5th and 6th grade.  By introducing these topics through a TOY (the robot and components), we hook kids into problem solving in a way that they feel empowered.  So my hat IS off to them.  
I agree that history is not focused on to the same degree.  Should it?  Should we graduate equal numbers of students as history majors as those in the STEM areas?  

When you develop a program that hooks 4th-8th grade students into history in the same way, my hat will be off to you.  But please research the program that another professional on this listserv discussed before putting it down.

Shannon Gagel
Gifted Intervention Specialist
Aurora City Schools

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 15, 2012, at 9:24 AM, "Will Fitzhugh" <fitzhugh at tcr.org> wrote:

I didn't realize that the FIRST Lego League
could teach Science (Biology, Chemistry, Physics)
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics using
only LEGOS!

If they can adapt that 13-year-old's STEM curriculum
to manage all that with LEGOS, my hat is off to them!

What until all those East Asian countries learn
about our advantage in that!!

Amazing! Perhaps they will really tackle history
and academic expository writing with LEGOS next?

The just-released NAEP results show only 3% of 
8th and 12th grade students are proficient in 
writing at present....

Will Fitzhugh

“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh at tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
www.tcr.org/blog

_______________________________________________
Ohiogift mailing list
Ohiogift at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/ohiogift

_______________________________________________
Ohiogift mailing list
Ohiogift at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/ohiogift

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/ohiogift/attachments/20120915/65f27392/attachment.html>