3. Field Activity 04

Scopes lesson https://www.scopesdf.org/scopesdf_lesson/create-an-rc-car-with-upper-primary/

Collaboration Connection

When meeting with all the grades during our collaboration meetings, the Grade 4 students and my STEM goals seemed to work perfect together for this collaboration. Luckily for me they were doing a 2 month UOI class about the transfer of energy. Their field trip was a visit to a local electric car company, where they learned how electric cars are made. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to show them how we can make something even more sustainable than an electric car: A solar power car!

Here’s some pictures of their trip to the car company.

Or not, because the website won’t let me add them. I’ll send them to you directly Chris!

Reflection Questions

1. Collaboration: Reflect on how you worked with colleagues or FLA participants during the Field Activity. At what stages of development and testing did the collaborator contribute? Please be detailed in your description. How did your collaborator’s perspective change the way you developed the lesson?

A: As an teacher in an IB school, collaboration is a very common between classes here. Unfortunately for me, the teachers do not have a weekly, or even monthly time to meet with the teachers of other classes to see where multidisciplinary learning can occur. But, luckily for me, I am often in the grade 4 class because I am the EAL support for all their English classes. So, I get a good opportunity to see what they are doing for English, and I get to talk to the teachers and students about what they are learning during their UOI (unit of inquiry) classes. Since their unit was on the transfer of energy, with a field trip to an electric car company, I thought it would be a perfect time to collaborate. As you may have seen in my previous lesson, we made a solar power car from a car kit. During their English classes, they are learning the key vocabulary about cars, types of energy, and how it can be transferred. In their UOI classes, they are learning about energy as well, such as how it can be transferred between living things as food, or from sources like wind and the sun to electricity. This allows us during STEM class to make things that use different energy sources. So, previously we learned that solar power cars can use the energy from the sun to move. This lesson, we learned that cars can move by battery, but in this lesson, we actually have to program the car to allow it to move in different ways. Besides from the collaboration of student knowledge, I also collaborated with the Fab Lab teacher Cici to make the car. While I bought the materials (for once,) and made the presentation, she was my demo student to see if the presentation was clear enough for her to understand, and to make sure it was student friendly. After she made the car from scratch, we decided to test it with students. During the lesson to the students, she also provided Chinese language support for our majority EAL students. The G4 teacher and Cici definitely helped me with ensuring that students were fully grasping the key concepts, skills, and knowledge needed to succeed for this lesson.

1. Instructional Challenges: What challenges did you encounter while teaching this lesson? How did you address or plan to address them? How are diverse learners’ needs being met in the lesson plan facilitation?

A: Since I bought this material myself, with my own money and without getting reimbursed, the most difficult thing about this lesson was that there was only one car. We had Microbits for all students, but only one car and remote control to put it in. Luckily, the Microbits are quite easy to take out and put in again, so I found a simple solution. I put the students in pairs, each student either being in charge of the remote control or the car coding. Each pair of students got a few minutes to test out the car. Students that coded quickly were able to test the car first. If they succeeded, or were waiting for the car, they were able to continue on their iPads coding different aspects of the car, like different lights, speeds, or sensors.

1. Integrating Disciplines: Where does your lesson plan fall on the continuum and why? How might you move the lesson plan along the continuum to the next level? • Multidisciplinary • Interdisciplinary • Transdisciplinary

A: While I would love to say that this is a transdisciplinary lesson, I think it falls between mutli and interdisciplinary. To succeed at not only building and coding this car, but also understanding its principals of how it works and how the energy moves between the battery and motors, you need knowledge of English, Chinese, science, technology, engineering, a bit of math, and if you want the kids to be interested in it; art to make it look good! Since this topic was discussed in English, UOI, and STEM classes, it was definitely at least a multidisciplinary unit. Since it was being integrated between UOI and STEM classes, it has a possibility of being called interdisciplinary as well. Since the students also had an out of school trip to an electric car company to learn how cars transfer energy to their wheels to move, adding a community level, it has the chance of being called transdisciplinary, but the project really wasn’t something like a PBL where we are finding a problem and trying to fix it with the help of the community or other departments of the school. If we could figure out how to combine the previous lesson of a solar power car, with this lesson of coding and programming the car, with the ability to scale the car to be able to actually transport a human using solar power, then we would be working our way up to transdisciplinary!

1. AI Usage: If you used AI, describe how it was used and in which steps of the Field Activity. A: For this activity, I didn’t use much AI. I did try to use AI to program the code in python for me, but the code that it gave me didn’t work. Perhaps this is because the Cutebot code is extra to Microbit and AI doesn’t have the extra coding in its databases.

2. Reflect on the course in general: • How has your teaching changed as a result of this course? • What are some concepts that you would like to learn more about? • How can you support other teachers in your practice to use digital fabrication with their students?

A: I entered this course wanting to know more about how to use the devices in the Fab Lab, and luckily, I finished the course knowing more about them. My biggest problem though is that both the vinyl cutter and the laser cutter need to be programmed through a Chinese program that matches with the creator of the device, and the laser cutter needs to be programmed through one specific Microsoft computer. Luckily the 3D printer is easy enough to use and can print things that students or teachers design on Tinkercad, which means that it is very possible for us to use it in lessons. Also, I believe I can make many things on them to enhance student learning in the future, now that I am confident to use it. I am interested in buying my own for my classroom as well! While this isn’t really digital fabrication, I would love to learn more about video editing. I am sure there are plenty of programs that can assist with it, but I just don’t know them and need a reason to practice using them. Perhaps the introduction module on that would make the rest of the course’s videos nicer, especially the first video on introducing our Fab Lab. I am also interested in renewability and sustainability, so I would love to know if there is some machine we can get that can melt previously used (and failed) 3D models into new filament that can be used again. I have already considered this final one and applied to add the title of “Technology Coordinator” for next year. I hope that I am able to bring technology into every class and help different grades with not only properly using the technology we have, but possibly adding new technology to the primary department that can be used in different ways. For example, I’d like to order 4-8 VR sets that can be used to explore different science, history, or geography based UOIs. I also think that students can use the Fab Lab to build many different things, as dioramas as too common and can be upscaled with some 3D printing or laser cutting. Hopefully I can add technology into many different classes to get that interdisciplinary approach!