Middle School Engineering Teachers Work and Play For a Day at the Center for Engineering Education Outreach at Tufts

After about a month of implementing and integrating new Legos Mindstorms learning resources into 8th grade middle school engineering classes, all three engineering teachers, Dan Miley (West Middle), Steve Tisbert (Wood Hill Middle School), and Tiny Helinski (Doherty) joined me for a day long visit to the Center for Engineering Education Outreach (CEEO) at Tufts University (http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu) for the opportunity to have some conversation with researchers at CEEO about best practices for teaching with Mindstorms resources and for the opportunity to work with the Legos resources ourselves while sharing experiences and ideas generated since the start of school

Upon our arrival at CEEO, Dr. Chris Rogers, director of the CEEO gave us each a Mindstorms EV3 Core Kit, the exact same kits that we use with Andover students, and were presented with the Silly Walks Challenge - to design a vehicle that moves forward without using wheels.  "I'll be back in an hour" Chris told us as he left to meet potential Tufts freshmen, turning us over to Dorit Assaf, a post-doctorate research associate who was present to help with technical issues, offer moral support, and share some insights about engineering education but had few directions on how to complete the challenge.

Setting to work on the Silly Walks challenge

     I think I can safely speak for all four of when I say that the first 20 minutes or so of the challenge were marked with uncertainty, frustration, and an acute awareness of how as educators, we are typically in the position of holding the answers and controlling the situation.  The recognition of this reaction really made clear how important it is for teachers to be as with comfortable making mistakes and struggling with uncertainty as we aspire our students to be in a classroom environment promoting creativity and risk-taking.

Tony Helinski - Doherty Middle School

After any number of dead ends and false starts, a design direction began to emerge and take shape for each of us.  It was fascinating to see how differently each of us approached the challenge - each of our designs were completely different in design.

Steve Tisbert - Wood Hill Middle School

Dan Miley - West Middle School

When Chris Roger's returned around noon, he was sporting shorts and a tee-shirt and clutching a couple of frisbees.  We were swept along to join other members of the Tufts engineering department for their weekly lunchtime game of ultimate frisbee - "it clears the mind out for a while so you can think better after" Chris tells us.  The good news was that we all made it through without injury or incident

After lunch, we returned to our projects with the challenge of adding sensors to our vehicle to prevent it from driving off of the table.  This step provided us some time to puzzle with the Mindstorms software and deepen our understanding of coding patterns.  We all came a long way both in the construction of our vehicles but also in our appreciation of how it feels to operate in an environment where there is no one right answer and mistakes and dead ends are a necessary part of doing business.

Our remaining time at CEEO was spent with Chris and Dorit discussing the direction of Andover's new program, best practices for maximizing student learning, and discussing research findings and how they might inform our instruction and curriculum development. We came away with a lot of great ideas for projects and activities that can be build into our students' experience.  The CEEO offers a variety of engineering education programs and resources to teachers and students in the Greater Boston area and we are hopeful that we can continue and grow our relationship with this group as our own engineering programs grow and evolve.

Rich and productive conversation with Dr. Chris Rogers about engineering education using Legos Mindstorms resources 

All in all, it was a tremendously productive, growth-filled, and enjoyable professional development experience, one that will certainly have an immediate positive impact on the learning of our middle school engineering students.


Steve Sanborn