Pictures from our Ed+gineering activities during the Spring 2022 Semester.
Collaboration 1
Fourteen teams of education and engineering students delivered engineering lessons to elementary students at Larchmont Elementary School and Saint Patrick Catholic School. Each team designed a lesson based on one of the three engineering challenges—kicking machine, paddle boat, and claw/grabber. Through these challenges, the teams introduced examples of problems engineers attempt to solve, engineers from an underrepresented group, and the engineering design process to 4th and 5th graders. Following the engineering design process, the elementary students designed, constructed, tested, and redesigned their prototypes.
Collaboration 2
Thirteen teams of one or two 5th graders from Academy for Discovery at Lakewood, one education student, and one or two engineering students from Old Dominion University met once a week for five weeks to design, build, and code a bio-inspired rescue or entertainment robot. The robots were required to mimic an animal or plant, travel on wheels, start/stop moving in response to a stimulus, and have a moving body part. The teams built a wide range of robots, from a painting squid robot for entertainment purposes to a snake robot that finds injured victims under rubble and notifies rescue teams. At the end of the project, all the team members and 5th-grade families gathered for a Family Showcase. During this showcase, engineers shared their robots with their team and families, listened to each team’s Shark Tank Pitch for their bio-inspired robots, and presented Audience Choice awards to Anthony (ODU engineer) and Ison (ADL student). Congratulations!
Collaboration 3
Six teams of engineering students and preservice teachers collaboratively designed and delivered engineering lessons to 3rd and 5th-grade elementary students at Southside STEM Academy at Campostella. Due to the COVID-19 school policy, the lessons were delivered in a hybrid format, where education students were in-class while engineers participated via zoom. During their initial visit, the teams briefly introduced topics of engineering and fluid mechanics and the engineering design process, and collected elementary students’ areas of interest. Based on their interest area, ODU students designed engineering challenges for their final lessons. These challenges included designing and building a waterslide that has multiple criteria (e.g., having at least one turn and one hill, carrying Mr. Duck to the ground level safely, taller than four inches), an eco-friendly pool raft, and a water tank that fills up water in 10-15 seconds.
