Secondary Years
Science & Engineering Exploration
Secondary Years continues the exploration of STEAM from primary years— ideas and thinking tools necessary for science and engineering learning. As on the primary years' workshop, this one will be divided into 4 different modules. The difference is that we'll dive a bit dipper on each concept so the children learn how to use previous gained knowledge to start to create things on their own.
Module 1 - Applied Science
Evaluating the value of any claim is called critical thinking. Critical thinking implies a skepticism or doubt about claims that are made with bias, and/or without supporting evidence that can be validated through repeatable experimentation. In this workshop, students will discover what science is, how scientists think critically, recognize and minimize cognitive bias, how to apply the scientific method, and how to design a controlled experiment. Throughout the workshop, students will explore the basic concepts of measurement, probability & statistics, forces, motion, waves, matter, energy, heat, light, and basic chemistry, as well as more complex concepts including cosmology, evolution, climatology & the environment - all while encouraging investigation skills.
Module 2 - Robots & Algorithms
With the LEGO® MINDSTORMS EV3 kit, students will design and build programmable robots using high quality motors, sensors and other technical components to gain a better understanding of how technology works in real world applications, understand, build, test, troubleshoot and revise designs to improve the robot's performance.
Module 3 - Mechanical Computers
We will explores how computers really function and the basics of computer engineering. Students will discover how simple, mechanical switches, connected together in clever ways, can do incredibly smart things and learn about their analogues found in all electrical computing devices. We will build mechanical computing machines to understand concepts like circuit design, binary operations, memory, logic gates, conditionals and truth tables.
Module 4 - Practical Problem Solving
In our last module we will present students with challenges where they need to think like scientists and engineers and work as a team. Each team will be given an innovation project, in which a practical problem must be investigated and solved. In addition, they will need to build and program their own robot to perform the various tasks needed to meet the challenge.