Category Archives: Messy Learning

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”The product isn’t as important as the process.” (Or – “Getting to a final product is an important part of the process.”)

During my classroom experience with “hands-on” project/problem based learning I would often hear from colleagues, “The product is not as important as the process.” I think there is truth to that, but during my years of observing / facilitating numerous projects I found it somewhat shortsighted. I’m not saying that the product always has to be polished, however I found that getting the project to be beautiful or stable is where much of the problem solving, art/design and creativity happen. Example: The gizmo you’ve built requires 2-3 people to hold it together while another pushes the button or it doesn’t work or falls apart, versus we got it to work now we have to find a way to house it, have it work consistently and maybe even make it aesthetically pleasing.

Yes, getting the gizmo to work at all or even close to working still involves lots of problem solving, collaboration and all the other goodness that comes from a project. Pushing through to get the gizmo to work and then making it more stable so it is held together with no help and maybe even designing a container that it fits in nicely, get into design and esthetics and an understanding of what goes into making a final product. Throw in making it beautiful by redesigning the container and deciding on color and shape and form adds even more creative exposure. This is some of the hardest work, thinking and problem solving that can happen. How often do students experience that part? I found it can take as long as the initial design.

Again, I’m not saying to go there every time. It’s not feasible because of time and other constraints, but consider it as a powerful piece of learning …  even once or twice a school year. The polish piece is an important learning piece that is way too often skipped or not appreciated as valuable. Yes, the process is very important, but don’t forget that getting to a stable, polished design is also very important. Messy, but very important.

Learning is messy!

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Getting Back To Writing Is Messy!

June 24, 2020, that is the last time I posted here. Well over a year ago! That was not the plan. That date happens to coincide with the fact that after 32 years as a classroom teacher (mostly upper elementary and middle school grades) and 8 years as the “STEM Learning Facilitator” for 6 school districts in my state, I retired.

The plan was to write more here and work on a second book (which might still happen), but a number of things conspired to make that hard. Certainly the pandemic, but also we’ve moved from Reno to Las Vegas (over 400 miles) renovated our new abode, and, well, just other busy things.

That said, I have tried to get back into writing, and I have the outlines of a number of post ideas to prove it, but when push has come to shove I just haven’t been able to follow through. Not really writer’s block as much as starting and then getting sidetracked by the amount of thinking and work this takes and admittedly, a lack of the motivation I used to feel that kept me going. 

I figured I just needed to get something written and that would “prime the pump” and I’d be back at it …. but as noted above that didn’t happen. Until now. Just writing this feels good and hoping it leads to more.

We will see!

Learning (and writing) is/are messy!

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High Hopes Project – When we launch you can follow the flight live! Here’s how

Find out more about this project here.

Our launch has been delayed until June 5th and maybe not until the following week because of weather conditions. When we launch, a communications payload keeps us in touch with the balloon’s progress. Besides 2 SPOT Trackers that use satellite technology to pinpoint the balloons location once it lands (2 in case one fails)  a HAM radio transceiver sends out a signal that we (and you) can watch live on a Google map. To do so go to aprs.fi on the web and type in KE7BQV-14 (See image below) AFTER WE LAUNCH. You’ll have to keep checking back here to see when we plan to launch. We’ll give you at least a day before notice.

After we launch, about every minute or so, a new red dot will appear on the map tracing the flight.

The image above traces a finished flight (usually about 90 tp 120 minutes) and demonstrates the box that opens when you click on a red dot – clicking on the red dots can be a bit frustrating at times, you might have to try more than once and be careful to click right on the dot. Note the information provided: Date and time, speed, compass heading (in this case 265 degrees), and altitude in feet.

In addition, I’ll be tweeting out progress as much as possible: @bcrosby

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High Hopes For Our Students and the World! Free STEM Project

From a past High Hopes mission over 90,000 feet above Nevada. That’s Lake Tahoe on the left. At this altitude the balloon is in “near space” above 98% of the Earth’s atmosphere. Note the thin blue line of the atmosphere and the dark of space above.

We’re launching the world’s “High Hopes” to the edge of space on a high altitude balloon and then releasing them to float gently back to Earth. Its easy for you, your students, their families and anyone else to submit high hopes to be included. We’ll print them out on special biodegradable paper that is embedded with wildflower seeds so that upon landing your “Hopes” become one with the Earth – its very symbolic. Here is a link to the “High Hopes Project” blog where you can learn more.

You can easily submit your “hopes” for your learning, your community and the world here through a Google form. Or you can submit your “hopes” through Twitter by using the hashtag #hhpSTEM.

This is the shadow of the Moon from about 23,000 meters (75,000 feet) during a balloon launch we collaborated on with NASA in Idaho during the total eclipse in 2017
High Hopes being released from above 90,000 feet during a mission in 2018.
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Africa’s plastic bag ban seems to be working, and a STEM challenge idea

My wife and I were fortunate to travel to Africa this past summer. Our itinerary included Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. We were notified by most of the listed countries when we applied for tourist visas that we were not to bring plastic bags into the country under penalty of heavy fines. This sparked my interest since during the past year I had helped develop a 5th grade STEM engineering lesson on reducing plastic pollution in the ocean.

I photographed this leopard with a Canon pocket camera with a 40x zoom lens in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania in July 2019.

We spent most of our time on safari in Tanzania, and I asked our guide about the reason for the new law. He explained that the small towns (and other areas) we would occasionally pass through had become heavily polluted with plastic trash. Towns were severely blighted with bags and other plastics stuck in trees, bushes, power lines and blowing drifts of trash on the ground. As we were passing through I was impressed by the cleanliness of these towns now. There was an initial national program that collected the plastic and now the goal is to keep them clean by banning plastic bags and other types of plastic trash.

You can imagine this scene with plastic bags stuck in the trees and grasses and how that would effect the wildlife and beauty in so many ways.

Other issues with plastic pollution is that bags collect water when it rains and then become perfect breeding ponds for malaria carrying mosquitoes. Plastics wash into the drainage and sewer systems where they clog and back-up the sewers and eventually dump their load into other waterways and the ocean.

Of course one of the driving forces behind the ban was to keep plastics out of their beloved national parks. Parks that are vital to their economy. Our experience bore this out. The scenery was beyond spectacular. In the parks you are immersed in animals – they are everywhere. And in nine days in the Serengeti I saw no plastic trash, except where it was supposed to be … in the trash.

Plastic pollution is a great STEM challenge for our students of all ages. It is a difficult problem to address, but it effects all of us. It involves not just removing the plastic and micro-plastics from our water and land, but also cutting off the flow of plastics that enter the environment every day. You’ve seen the photos of animals with plastics wrapped around and stuck in their bodies. Those photos of animals and plastic infested waters are also great motivators to our students to get involved with and persevere in finding solutions.

Baby Giraffe. Still had some of its umbilical cord attached.

Students can design machines and other methods to remove plastics that can involve computer programming to operate and stress re-design, and collaboration. Students can also mount marketing and public awareness campaigns using social media in powerful, “real life” contexts where they really make a difference. Think social media and photos, videos and other sharing media used in ethical, meaningful ways to promote keeping plastics out of the environment.

Sunrise over the Serengeti. Wildebeests.

This is “messy” learning for sure. It takes time to do well and so it mostly doesn’t happen in our schools even though we know it is the very kind of learning experience we should be providing. It is the work and powerful learning that is so lacking today. It promotes awareness of the world around us, the wonder and issues the world provides AND the motivation to do real work. Work that cries out for collaboration, problem solving, creativity and perseverance.

STEM and inquiry learning should not only be jumping from one cool project or experiment to the next. We leave too much of the potential learning behind when that happens. At least a few times each year the take a project to a refined ending, including integrating (writing, speaking, social studies, math, PE … really anything) analyzing the data, collaborating (globally if possible), continuing the engineering design cycle through multiple iterations and even taking the time to “polish” the end product. That polishing is where the connection to art often flourishes. Shape, color, textures and more of the finished product are difficult and provide new challenge and problem solving that connects to more students.

Consider the learning projects solving issues like plastic pollution provide for students and jump in!

Learning is messy!

(More photos can be found here and here)

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Helping Nevada’s Homeless – A 4th grade NGSS STEM Engineering Lesson – an introduction

Last year I was part of a team funded by the Nevada Governor’s Office of Science, Innovation and Technology to provide the first Engineering Fellows Program for 5th grade teachers. The model learning sequence we started the program with was about the issue of plastic pollution, specifically how it effects the ocean. 5th grade students were challenged to design and engineer a way to remove plastic from the ocean.

This year the program is focused on 4th grade teachers and their students. The model NGSS aligned engineering lesson we’ll start them with is about helping the homeless by engineering a way for them to charge devices when they have little to no access to electricity. The teachers (and their students) will learn how homeless people face the issue of being contacted after they’ve interviewed for a job (or a doctor’s appointment and other issues). So being able to recharge a phone or other devices could aid them in solving their homeless situation.

I plan to post the whole lesson sequence later, but wanted to share the basic concept since I was working on it a bit today assembling this simple alternator.

Students, in small groups, will assemble the alternator, including wrapping the wire, which is no easy feat. Next, after researching the issues that the homeless deal with, students will design a way to spin their alternator to generate electricity. We will NOT share any ideas for this with students, but I would assume some might design a handle or perhaps some kind of wind turbine or who knows? That’s the messy learning part I love. I put one together today and had some issues getting the wire to wind without kinking. Teachers will do this themselves during our first meeting so that they gain worthwhile experience that helps facilitate their students later in class.

My alternator worked fine lighting the LED. You spin the green axle to generate electricity.

The grant pays for materials for the teacher sessions and the materials they’ll need for their students. In addition at the end of the program teachers will get a grant for $1,000 to purchase the materials required to teach lessons they and their colleagues develop during the program. I’ll share our progress along the way.

Learning is messy!

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Cardboard Automata Resource

My friend Kevin Jarrett shared this easy to follow guide to Cardboard Automata from the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It’s a great FREE resource for getting started with making in a fun, creative way. You can easily get started with stuff you probably already have around the house or classroom. Kevin suggests:

“Pro tip: print the instruction pages in color and have them laminated. Then place several at tables where people are working so they can refer to them. Works great!“

The guide includes links to video clips, materials lists, examples of projects, and suggestions, besides the colorfully illustrated step by step instructions. A great way to get started at home or in the classroom. The obvious next step would be taking the skills learned here and integrating them with motors, gears and such, whether you have them or get them in a kit such as what is offered in a Hummingbird Bit kit. Then besides hand cranking the movements, you have motorized them and added computer programming to the mix. Check it out!

Learning is messy!

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High Hopes Project HAB Launch 6/1/18

Group photo just before launch

I’m going to try and catch up on some long past due posts about the High Hopes Project. Last June we launched from Virginia City High School in Nevada. I posted about the preparation for the launch which will give you good background on the payloads students designed. The launch went flawlessly – perfect weather, not a puff of wind.

 

 

 

Besides the student payloads and GoPro cameras, we launched our Flir infrared camera as well which gave us some interesting perspectives. Note the shadows in this shot:

Note the long shadows from the early morning sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then note what appear to be shadows in this screenshot taken from the video shot by our infrared camera soon after launch:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What appear to be shadows are not. They are cooler areas on the ground caused by the shadows of the balloon and students. Note the balloon has already been launched and is 200 feet in the air (or more), how could its shadow be where it was before it launched?

Here is video of the launch in infrared:

And here is the launch taken from the ground:

One of the student payloads was an interesting sound experiment. The question they were trying to answer was: “At high altitude above 98% of the Earth’s atmosphere, would the air be so thin that sound would not travel through the thin air to be picked up by a microphone?” The students designed a Tie-Fighter from Star Wars (just for fun) and had the Star Wars theme playing on a loop. You can see the ball shaped speaker in the center of the video. They insulated the base so sound would not travel through the payload and be picked up by the microphone. It started out great, but unfortunately at about 42,000 feet it just got too cold (probably around -10F) and the batteries, which had lasted for 3 hours when they did a test in a school freezer at 15F, just quit. We edited together video from launch and then spliced in at about 8,000 feet and then just before the batteries died:

Another student payload took on the engineering task of releasing the “High Hopes” of the world. Students and others from around the world had submitted their high hopes for their school, community and the world through a Google Form or Twitter (about 1100 were submitted). The “Hopes” were printed out and cut out individually and placed in a payload students had designed to open about an hour into the mission. Again the batteries they had tested, and lasted for 5 hours at 15F, that ran the motor that would open up the payload to release the high hopes failed. Fortunately they had designed in a back-up system. When the balloon burst and the payloads fell to Earth at over 200 miles per hour (until the parachute slowed them down at lower altitude) a fin on the side of their payload caught the wind and pulled open a side of the payload and released the high hopes.

High Hopes release at about 95,000 feet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is video of the burst and high hopes release in slow motion:

After a flight we like to note what happens to the balloon on the way up. Note in the photo at the top of this post the 2000 gram balloon is probably about 6 – 8 feet across (we over-filled it a bit so it would go up fast and come down before it got too far up in the mountains and private property). When it burst it was just a bit bigger:

At launch the payloads almost cover up the balloon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But just before burst at 95,000 feet … note any difference in balloon size? If so, why?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some more photos taken up high:

Burst

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lake Tahoe on the left, Pyramid Lake on the right at 92,000 feet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yerington, Nevada, from 90,000 feet. A wide angle setting on this camera and the movement from falling exaggerates the Earth’s curve in the photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many more photos on this Flickr album.

We came very close to “catching” this one on the way down, but were thwarted when we lost cell service (so GPS as well) at a key point in the descent and missed it by about 2 minutes.

Learning is messy!!

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What Happened to the Potential of Social Media in Education?

A post that happens when Twitter isn't enough

Dean Shareski posted this to Twitter (SM = Social Media):

Read the thread of comments (it’s worth a minute or 2) by following the link.

I’ve written a bit about this before, and ironically that post from 8 years ago also involved Dean (Who’da Thunk?).

Dean is right, when this social media thing was new and all, some of us saw a powerful potential for it’s use in the classroom and beyond as a thoughtful, motivating and powerful way to connect our students with each other, and experts, and locations, and learning that hadn’t been very accessible before. Now they were available, and they were available on a global scale. Time zones were pretty much the major obstacle (and fear for some, really many I guess). I co-wrote a book about what we had learned along the way because we found it was pretty much as awesome as we thought it would be.

Many of us sang the praises of blogging and Twitter and Flickr and Skype and Facebook (except it was usually blocked even more often than the others). We’d encourage and almost demand that those attending presentations we were giving sign up for Twitter … RIGHT NOW! …. and provide the screenshots to follow and time to sign up. This was such an powerful tool we had to evangelize to the world about it.

So what happened? Plenty of good things happened. Many teachers made those connections and shared learning experiences that were leveraged by the use of online tools. Blogging was my favorite because a blog can be writing, but also photos, video clips, podcasts, and more … and the photos could be of student artwork field trips, math …. any subject. My class connected with Dean a few times when he was working with teachers in Canada … but we danced with students in New Zealand, performed experiments with classrooms around the world, shared guest speakers and much, much more.

So what didn’t happen? Plenty. Among the things that didn’t happen was what usually happens in education – a lack of professional development, especially for those that needed more support and experience to see the value. Just doing “technology” isn’t where the value is, but that is where schools/education in general tended to go … the message too many get is that just by doing school on a computer will bring the change we are looking for … so not true.

Fear was and is big – will the boogey-man get me or my students and will I get in trouble? Access – to the internet, to technology (well the lack of access really) is and was a roadblock. Time, in reality, but also the perception of lack of time for all this stuff stops many from gaining the experience necessary. A very demanding, narrowed and scripted curriculum that does not lend itself to integration, going deep and being thoughtful … that happened big time.

I think the potential is still there. It just needs a re-birth of sorts. At least more of us know the nuts and bolts of getting online and setting up accounts and some safety concerns. Perhaps now the focus needs to shift to the powerful collaboration, connecting, editing, sharing between our students about important things (not mostly bopping around via video-conferencing to figure out where someone’s school is) that these tools provide us. Share science data, stories, poetry, how to do things, art projects, robot designs and so much more … and take the time to do them well and even the time to re-edit and re-present. Then have conversations about them in the comments … and teach students how to have the positive, supportive discourse that makes it powerful and the world a better place.

There’s lots more to say about this, its a very important discussion that should be ongoing … maybe we can have some of that discussion in the comments here (or on Twitter or elsewhere). I’m out of time for now. I hope this continued Dean’s Tweet conversation in a meaningful way.

Learning is messy!

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – A 5th Grade Learning Sequence

Plastic pollution in an ocean gyre. Some floats on the surface, but more floats beneath the surface.

I am part of a team that is facilitating the “Nevada Engineering Fellows Program” for 5th grade teachers in Nevada. The funding for the program came from the Nevada Governor’s Office of Science Innovation & Technology. A major goal of the program is for teachers to learn how to design and build NGSS aligned STEM units with an emphasis on engineering, and to be able to evaluate the quality of units they find elsewhere.

The plastic pollution problem in our oceans has become catastrophic. Plastic never goes away it, just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces (micro plastics) that are ingested by sea life (and then us).

Chris Jordan http://www.parley.tv/updates/2016/3/17/chris-jordan-midway-message-from-gyre

We started by having the participating teachers experience a model unit we designed on removing plastic from the ocean. They spent all day on a Saturday in October learning the unit. Then we provided all the materials required for the teachers to take the unit back to their classrooms to do with their students. We visited every classroom to observe how things were going and to consult. The phenomena that kicked off the unit is the video below (there are many others to choose from BTW if you search the web). Teachers and students reported to us during our classroom visits how compelling watching and re-watching the video and making/sharing observations of what they saw and heard … really motivated them to want to take on this engineering challenge.

Here is a link to the unit plan.  Kris Carroll did most of the heavy lifting on the unit design with plenty of  help from Stacy Cohen, Tracey Gaffney and myself.

The graphic organizers referenced in the unit plan and some support materials:

Engineering INB Phase A_3_5_ElementarySchool 

Engineering INB Phase B_3_5_ElementarySchool

Engineering INB Phase C_3_5_ElementarySchool

Engineering In NGSS Handout

Engineering Design_Grades_3_5

Here is the materials list for making a plastic gyre for each group (although we substituted somewhat and some teachers added to it): Materials for gyre

Here is a link to a Flickr set from teacher trainings in- Southern Nevada, Northern Nevada

Here are photos from 10 classrooms in Northern Nevada.

BELOW: These are the plastic plant trays we provided:
IMG_4705

But some teachers substituted with larger containers: IMG_4718

The trays of water were somewhat problematic in that they were small (so they could be utilized more easily in moving to and from student tables) and students struggled with scale. One big suggestion based on our experience, after the initial trial of their design, have a complete debrief that includes a discussion of size of both the plastic debris (which should be cut much smaller than you see here) but also that the devices students build need to be smaller than you see here as well. In addition discuss how the trays represent a tiny, tiny part of the ocean (students really struggled with understanding the size of oceans). Also we suggest after the initial experience have students brainstorm materials that they believe should be included in the materials they have available to build their plastic removal/gathering device – then gather them from the school and have students find things at home to bring in to provide themselves more options.

We had an all day class for the teachers after most of them had completed most of the unit. They all reported that they and their students were highly motivated by the experience (and we noted the same during our classroom visits). Next teachers are designing their own units to match up with their curriculum using this experience as a model. I really feel I’m sharing only a sliver of the potential for this lesson and how it went here, so feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Learning is messy!