teachers

Program Reflection

October 4, 2018

 Joule Fellow: Diane Walsh

I had six different stations around the room.  In my smaller class, I had groups of two and three students.  In my larger classes, I had six groups of four students.  The six stations are:
  1. Force sensor station with the decalcified chicken bones where students measured the force applied (and took a picture with each compression).
  2. 3-point bend test station where students used given data to create a mathematical model (piecewise-defined function) for the data using Desmos.
  3. Shin guard station where students brainstormed ideas to build a shin guard and decided who would be what materials to school next week to build the shin guard.
  4. Young’s Modulus station where students solved word problems related to YM, stress, and strain.
  5. Stereognosis station where students sorted foam samples by stiffness, first by touch only and then using sight.  They also watched a short video about Science of Materials.
  6. Candy-Matching station where students pulled apart a Kit Kat, Milky Way, marshmallow, and gummy worm and matched the candy name to the corresponding stress-strain graph.  They also watched a short video with examples of this activity using similar British candy.
  7. (next class)  I have five laptops available for students to analyze the force sensor images using ImageJ to determine the displacement of the sample under compression.
Lesson pics 1
  1. Students are compressing a de-calcified chicken bone section using a force sensor and collecting force-displacement data.
  2. Same but with a piece of foam inside the core.
  3. Students pull apart candy and match the stress-strain graphs to the corresponding candy name.  In this picture, a student is stretching a marshmallow.
  4. A student is sorting foam samples (some are plain, others with a cutout, and others are composite samples) by touch only from softest to stiffest.
Lesson pics 2
  1. A student is sorting foam samples while being able to see the samples and comparing the results to the ones gathered using touch only.
  2. A student is using a rubber mallet and a leather punch tool to make a sponge core for a chicken bone composite sample.
  3. Hints for the station where students were solving Young’s Modulus, stress, and strain word problems.
Lesson pics 3
  1. Same as described in the first set.
  2. Students are using Desmos to analyze force-displacement data of a 3-point bend test on a chicken bone.  Students were given the data.  They are modeling the data using a piecewise-defined function with a linear component at the start and are running the regression to determine if the ductile region is best modeled by a quadratic or a cubic function.
  3. Students are using ImageJ to analyze the data collected from the force sensor on the decalcified chicken bones.

January 29, 2018 News — Video

January 29, 2018
Joule Fellow:
Tammy Cohen

This is a video 2 students made of a chemical reaction – the change happens at the end. I did this as part of the DaVinci program as part of the hydrogen fuel cell car project. Students “engineer” the reaction to proceed faster and then slower. I was unaware of this reaction until I participated in the Joule and DaVinci programs.

I still have students do the solar cell engineering project where they maximize and minimize current, voltage, and power using multimeters, LED lights, small motors, and small incandescent lights. I wish I had more pictures, but I really need 100% of my attention on my students during lab activities and really can’t risk taking my eyes off them even for the moment it would take to snap a quick picture.

Joule Fellows Take Lab Lessons Back To The Classroom

August 28, 2014

This fall, 11 high school science and math teachers who took part in UConn’s Joule Fellows program will bring back to their schools in-depth knowledge on such topics as chemical-looping systems, 3-D printing and modeling of ocean waves.

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The Joule Fellows outside the F.L. Castleman building

With their training in the program – formally known as Research Experience for Teachers (RET) – the teachers can now hold lessons on these specific engineering in a degree of detail rarely seen at the high school level. As part of the program, teachers from high schools, technical high schools, and community colleges come to UConn to do research for six weeks. They also meet every week for workshops on various topics and have a weekly lunch to exchange ideas. At the end of the program, they each present a short film about what they’ve learned and a lesson plan related to their experience. After the six-week period is over, the teachers stay in touch with their mentors.

Kazem Kazerounian, Dean of the School of Engineering, and Dr. Radenka Maric are the principal investigators of the program, which the National Science Foundation is funding for the second time.

The Joule Fellowship program is focused on outreach and immersing teachers from Connecticut high schools in engineering research. Past efforts to spark students’ interest in engineering include robot competitions at area high schools. During the most recent session, some of the Joule Fellows brought their students to their labs at UConn. Aida Ghiaei, program director, said this is the sort of initiative that strengthens the engineering community and the relationship between UConn and area schools.

The long-term goal is to reverse the ongoing decline in the number of U.S. citizens training to become engineers. State teachers work with faculty members in the Engineering School and learn proposal writing, technical communication, best engineering research practices, scientific ethics and code of conduct, among other subjects. They also train in techniques for creative problem-solving in the laboratory and learn how to develop these skills into effective lessons for their students.

It’s rare for high school science and math teachers to have formal engineering training, even though many colleges look to recruit promising students for their engineering programs.

“I teach high school chemistry and high school physics classes, and in both of those classes, I’m going to have what I’ll call ‘Fuel Cell Fridays,’” said Ruth Thomas, who teaches at Enfield High School. “They’re going to be learning what’s in a fuel cell, what it’s made of, they’re going to practice putting together models. By November, they’re going to come out and take a tour of C2E2 and some other engineering buildings – I’m going to bring about 90 students. They’ll be able to understand it at a much deeper level than they would have otherwise.”

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Joule Fellow Peter Van Buren gives a presentation.

And because much of the training takes place in the laboratory, the program brings teachers beyond “textbook” science.

“They got to see things not working, which is very common in research,” said Travis Omasta, one of the post-doc students helping with the program. ”You have to figure out why it didn’t work, and then you move forward. That’s one of the most important components of research, and they got to see that first-hand with a couple frustrating moments.” Omasta is one 10 Joule Buddies, post-doc students who assist in the mentoring of the program.

Steve Pintavalle, who teaches at Glastonbury High School, agreed that observing the trial-and-error process of research will be valuable to his students.

“I think that’s something students don’t see,” he said. “They have this understanding that everything is supposed to go smoothly.”

Omasta said the benefits of the program work both ways.

“Whatever they’re doing is contributing to our research, and they’re learning a whole bunch of stuff along the way,” he said. “It ends up a positive experience the whole way, where everyone gets something out of it.”

Joule Fellow Peter Van Buren, who teaches at East Longmeadow High School, trained in the lab of Shalabh Gupta and learned about the science of building and operating copters.

“I think I have a better appreciation for the process you have to go through,” Van Buren said. “The physical building of the robot – anyone can do that, especially with a kit. But there’s all the stuff that goes on with the computer, the programming, the calibration, the firmware. I run a robotics club and that’s been very frustrating for a lot of the kids. I think having gone through the same process, that’s going to help me a lot in dealing with those issues.

Joule Fellows Faculty member Arash E. Zaghi (CEE) served as a mentor to Michael Humphreys, a math and science teacher at Xavier High School in Middletown, who’s completing his master’s degree in structural engineering. Zaghi said programs like this one are critical to the advancement of the future of engineering.

“By getting high school level educators into university laboratories to experience the most current practices in engineering, it enables them to share this experience with their students and in turn pass this excitement on to the next generation of engineers,” he said.