Inspiring tomorrow's engineers

Image from Smithsonianmag.com website

In my last post I shared an interesting website that has a lot of useful material for engineers - and for teaching English to engineers.The website of the Smithsonian magazine (of the Smithsonian Institution) has a number of topic areas, including Innovation - which is where I usually look for interesting articles for my students.

Link to website:
www.smithsonianmag.com

But one of the sub-sections of Innovation is "Education," and I looked at the articles there for my own interest. So I was pleased to find an article called "To Develop Tomorrow's Engineers, Start Before They Can Tie Their Shoes." It seemed to be not only interesting to me, but also relevant for my students. I wondered how old they were when they first became interested in engineering - or their particular field of engineering - and how they became interested.

The article focuses on an educational program in the United States for preschool and elementary school children called Ramps and Pathways. It encourages young children - through games, building, projects and fun - to develop skills and interests that can be related to engineering.

Link to the article:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/to-develop-tomorrows-engineers-start-before-they-can-tie-their-shoes-16560619/

I decided to share it with different engineering groups, to see what they thought of the ideas and how they would add to them.

I had students brainstorm ideas beforehand: What does it mean to "think like an engineer"?

Then we recorded the ideas and discussed students' reactions to them. Then, to generate ideas for how to get children interesting in engineering, I asked:

• How had they been inspired to study engineering?
• What did they do as children, if anything, which made engineering "fun"?
• What is their advice for parents, teachers, school systems, and children to inspire more children to become interested in engineering?
• Do they have any particular advice for girls?

Subsequent to the discussion (generally for homework), I had the students read the article and highlight the ideas and suggestions. We compared them to the students' ideas, and then had them "rate" the advantages and disadvantages of each one.

Ultimately, we decided: What is the benefit (or possible impacts) of encouraging young children in the ways described in the article?

In addition to a very lively discussion with each group, there were a number of useful language points:

• language used for cause and effect
• e.g., "By building and adjusting inclines propped by blocks, children experiment with marbles moving along various paths."
• "To help the program expand ..., (educators) are intent on showing..."
• "One child, for example, was so intent on making his ramp work that he spent more than seven minutes..."
  
  By building and adjusting inclines propped by blocks, children experiment with marbles moving along various paths.
  
  
  Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/to-develop-tomorrows-engineers-start-before-they-can-tie-their-shoes-16560619/#8FIqvr7MTG6JjC6H.99
  Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
  Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on TwitterBy b
  By building and adjusting inclines propped by blocks, children experiment with marbles moving along various paths.
  
  
  Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/to-develop-tomorrows-engineers-start-before-they-can-tie-their-shoes-16560619/#8FIqvr7MTG6JjC6H.99
  Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
  Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
• language to present examples
•  "Once, for example, Van Meeteren saw a first-grade student build a structure..."
• variety of tenses; explain the uses 
• children explore the properties
• she watched a little girl
• the method is mostly taking root
• she has been encouraging teachers

This article provided interesting material for more than two lessons. Many of my students wanted to learn more about this program, so I had them follow up on it and report back to the class. I think it gave them plenty of food for thought!

Smithsonian magazine for source material

I want to recommend a website that is a great source of material for all types of engineering courses. The website of the Smithsonian magazine has a marvelous variety of topic areas, articles, videos, games and visuals. This magazine is the official journal published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. This institution is a group of 19 museums and 9 research centers that comprise the largest and most diverse "museum" in the United States. It was founded in 1846 for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge." The institution's magazine certainly reflects that vision.

www.smithsonianmag.com

Main topic areas are:

• Smartnews
• History
• Science
• Innovation
• Arts & Culture
• Travel
• At the Smithsonian
• Photos
• Videos
• Games

Within the Innovation section (where I like to look), there are further topic areas:

• Education
• Energy
• Health & Medicine
• Innovators
• Technology
• Video
• Future is Here Festival (an annual event)

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/technology/

I like to browse through the "Technology" section of Innovation to find interesting articles for my students. Some recent headlines (April to May 2014) are:

• Here’s a Water Bottle You Can Actually Eat
• Checking the Claim: A House That Produces More Energy than it Consumes
• Inside the Science of an Amazing New Surgery Called Deep Brain Stimulation 
• Inside the Technology That Can Turn Your Smartphone Into a Personal Doctor
• Massive Flying Wind Turbine Could Offer a New Path to Clean Energy
• This Battery Could Charge Your Smartphone in 30 Seconds

In future posts I will be sharing the work I will do with some of these articles, but next week I'll focus on an article from the "Education" section of Innovation, since a topic I found there provided material for a very lively discussion in three different engineering classes of mine (robotics engineering, biomedical engineering and information technology). The area of engineering doesn't matter, since the topic focuses on engineering in general (What does it mean to "think like an engineer"?), and all my students had a lot to say about it. And, as usual, I'll include some ideas about features of language focused on.

Robotic ants for language practice

Photo from BBC website

The BBC news website has an interesting article about robotic ants developed in the United States that behave like a real ant colony. Their collective behavior helps robotic engineers design systems that work in a similar fashion to an ant swarm. This news item can also be found on many other websites - many of which present the article from BBC - but I particularly liked this article for its useful language features.

Link to article: http://www.bbc.com/news/21956795

The article has the features of process description that I assign my students to write in their own process descriptions:

• what is the innovation?
• what is it for?
• what does it look like / what is it made of?
• how does it work?

as well as including various features that make the information more accessible to a non-technical audience. I feel that the ability to describe an aspect of technology to a lay audience is very useful for my students' future professional careers.

Several examples from the article that illustrate this:

• ...robotic ants that they say behave just like a real ant colony
• ...their collective behaviour is remarkably ant-like
• ...just like an insect swarm
• This is because, like ants, the robots leave a trail that others follow
• ...along their route, leaving a "breadcrumb trail" of lights...
• (The robots each) have two antennae on top, which are light sensors.
• The classic example ... is the way in which we design information networks to move packets of data around. Ants don't have someone in charge telling them where to go, so you can (mimic this). For instance ...

Since the innovation is compared to real ants, there are many examples of comparisons in the text. Examples include:

• just like
• the robots leave a trail ...; while ants leave a trail ...
• got brighter every time
• exactly the same mechanism as ...
• Because ants taking the shorter path travel faster, ...
• ...which has already been used in...

There are several verbs used to report what people said, and I like students to notice these so that in their own writing they don't keep using the verb "say" (he said, they said). While the article uses this verb a number of times, it also uses report, explained, see, describe.

Finally, there are very useful collocations that I want students to notice and record in their vocabulary records, so that they can use these word partnerships correctly in their own writing and in presentations. A few that I've highlighted for them:

• equip with
• enable to move
• move forward toward
• avoid obstacles
• (move) through a network
• take cues from
• leave a trail
• set up
• connect to
• etc.

In addition to the article, there is a useful video (1:58 minutes) that describes both the robot ants and the process of their behavior. The narrator speaks at a very good tempo for students to understand, but is not a native speaker. The same video is also available on youtube:

Video on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snrro6P6Z-E

The work my students did with this article was not only useful for their language skills, but was also very interesting for them. They particularly liked watching the video, first with the narrator's description, then with the sound turned off so that they could describe what they were watching in their own words. The students agreed with a biologist who is quoted in the article:

• "And these things look pretty cool, too."