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Project Blog This page serves as a chronological log of our adventures related to the project. 8 May, 2007 Program Completion The project is officially complete! All final versions of program manuals are posted on the project descriptions page. The final PowerPoint presentation and PDF version of our final writeup are available on the files page. We would like to acknowledge all of our sponsors, the volunteer schools, our four export engineer volunteers, Professor Knud Holm Hansen from IHK, Professors Zeugner, Thomsen and Pedersen from WPI, and all the people we interviewed to get the information we needed. We couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you very much! 18 April, 2007 Program Development and Implementation The team is now feverishly putting together the programs. We are in the middle of running the LEGO program at Christianshavns Gymnasium, and next week we will be implementing the Windmill program at østerhøjskolen (Folkeskole). On 24 April, a Well Site Engineer from Mærsk will be coming to Christianshavns Gymnasium to speak about her experiences as an engineer. We are also trying to finish up the remaining three programs. Our final paper will be finished by 4 May, and our final presentations are at IHK on 7 May, followed by the project presentation fair where students will be demonstrating their robots and windmills. · Our team at Christianshavns Gymnasium during the running of the LEGO Mindstorms program. · Gymnasium students at work assembling the LEGO robots. · Students programming the robots. 23 March, 2007 Transition to Denmark; IHK Students; Interview with Yvonne Herguth Our team has made the successful transition to working in Denmark. After a week-long introduction to Danish, we have now completed our first week working full-time on developing the hands-on engineering programs for implementation in Danish schools. Our team has expanded due to the addition of four student volunteers at IHK who are receiving project credit from our advisor, Knud Hansen. Dina Mathiasen, Nynne Christiansen, Kresten Daugaard and Johanne Sørensen have been helping us develop contacts at local schools, as well as translating Danish educational standards for our use. On Wednesday we interviewed Yvonne Herguth, a student-teacher at Børneuniversitetet, a private folkeskole. She had several tips for our project. Most importantly was the contact with her college, where our program could be distributed in future years. We have e-mailed her a brief description of the programs so that any interested teachers can contact us and receive the appropriate materials. Additionally, her folkeskole has expressed interest in running our program, along with two teachers from Henrik Bang’s school (Christianshavn Gymnasium), and one other folkeskole. Current efforts among the project team are developing the program handbooks for both teachers and students, as well as building the demonstration models associated with each program. Monday we are scheduled to visit the Experimentarium (a hands-on learning center for children similar to the Exploratorium) to interview science educators, thanks to Nynne who works there. We are all looking forward to running the programs in schools. · Our Expanded Project Team (in order they were listed above) 26 February, 2007 Final Presentations Tonight we presented our project to Professors Zeugner and Thomsen, as well as the rest of the Denmark crew. The presentation was received well. In the next few days, we will be perfecting our Powerpoint slides and finishing up our IQP writeup. The website has also recently undergone some changes, including a revamped homepage and a page detailing the projects themselves (under the Project tab). Also, IHK has allotted some funding for our folkeskole projects. All in all, we are very excited to start working in Denmark! 19 February, 2007 Initial Gymnasium Teacher Interest Henrik Bang contacted us through email today saying that colleagues of his were “very positive about meeting you and giving you opportunities to work with classes.” This in conjunction with LEGO sponsorship are two enormous hurdles passed on the way to a successful outcome. With teacher interest and official sponsorship, the only remaining obstacles are securing funding for the other projects from IHK, finding interested folkeskole teachers and actually getting to Denmark. With only 20 days remaining until our departure, it is reassuring to know that the pieces are all falling into place. 12 February, 2007 LEGO Sponsorship We received official word through our contact at IHK that LEGO will be sponsoring our project by donating “up to five Mindstorms kits” to our project. With the Mindstorms kits, we will oversee the pilot run of the program in Denmark and gauge its success. We believe that the program will spread after the pilot run, especially now that five Mindstorms kits will be available to any school wishing to borrow them. Our hope is to leave the kits with IHK along with the program instructions, so that any gymnasium teacher can borrow them for the two weeks necessary to run the program. We are very grateful to LEGO for this generous donation, as this is obviously a huge step toward the success of our project. 8 February, 2007 Interview with Henrik Bang We spent the early evening conversing with Henrik Bang, a gymnasium (grades 10-12, unspecialized high school) teacher from Denmark spending a year in America. We had a lengthy discussion about the setup of Danish schools, and the likelihood of the success of our project. Based on his input, we were able to make significant strides concerning the direction of our project. His first proposal to us was to change the focus from an after-school program to a curricular setting, since extracurricular activities are hard to implement with the current Danish school setup. He suggested that we target the upper grades of folkeskole, the Danish “elementary” school (grades K-9), because the Danish curriculum for folkeskole is very lenient in terms of a sequential structure. He also advised that we look into expanding our project to include students from the lower grades of gymnasium, not only because some of those students would still be flexible in terms of what career path they would be choosing, but also because teachers have more time for lesson planning and might be more likely to work with our project team to implement certain lesson plans. Overall, the meeting was a huge step forward; we now have much more confidence in terms of both the direction the project is going and the likelihood of success. 29 January, 2007 Field Trip to LEGO Packaging Facility, Enfield, Connecticut We spent the morning and early afternoon at LEGO Corporation’s facility in Connecticut. The drive from Worcester took around an hour, and we met with our contact, Aimée Crisanti, whom Erin had met at a networking event a few weeks earlier. Aimée gave us an extensive tour of the plant. Sadly, it will be closing down at the end of March 2007 due to outsourcing. The trip was definitely a productive one, especially since Aimée told us about two new contacts at LEGO in Denmark: Torben Jessen, an Educational Concept Developer (he was in charge of development of the Mindstorms kits), and Kristian Østergaard, a local LEGO dealer. We have since been in contact with both of them. We hope to be adding LEGO to our “Sponsors” page in the near future. We also acquired a Mindstorms kit to aid in our project development. LEGO Mindstorms is an ideal kit for teaching electrical and mechanical engineering concepts to some of the older age groups; we hope to get the OK from LEGO very soon. Pictures: · The project team in the distribution warehouse. · Another view of the distribution warehouse. · A machine designed to count pieces for packaging. · The project team at the end of the tour.