More toys to promote S.T.E.M.

In my blog post of 9 October 2014 I wrote about GoldieBlox - a construction toy specifically designed for girls to promote their interest in S.T.E.M. (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).

The toy has been extremely successful, and there is increasing interest in promoting girls' involvement with technology, especially at younger ages. In fact, there is increasing interest in promoting involvement with S.T.E.M. for all children.

There are two recent articles that look at this development:

The toys that could help close Silicon Valley's gender gap (from CNBC website) and How to teach computer science in nursery school; No assembler required (from The Economist online).

The first article focuses on the Dash & Dot robot developed by Wonder Workshop.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/04/the-toys-that-could-help-close-silicon-valleys-gender-gap.html

Wonder Workshop Dash & Dot robot pack

The CEO of Wonder Workshop, Vikas Gupta, was inspired to develop toy robots that teach children how to code in order to introduce his 4-year-old daughter to technology.

The article states, "As early as second grade, girls begin to form stereotypes associating boys with math, according to a 2015 study conducted by the University of Washington. By the time they enter college, men are already more than four times more likely to have an intention to major in computer science and engineering than women, the study found."

The article has links to this study and to another article relating to this company. In addition, it mentions KinderLab Robotics, which has introduced a toy to help very young children learn to code.

The second article focuses specifically on KinderLab Robotics' toy, KIBO.

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21660077-how-teach-computer-science-nursery-school-no-assembler-required

KIBO robot kit from KinderLab Robotics

The article explains, "KIBO is designed for those aged four to seven. Instead of arranging, as an older programmer might, a set of constants, variables, operations and expressions, all written in something resembling English, into a logical sequence, a KIBO programme arranges wooden blocks that carry stickers bearing symbols. These symbols tell a plastic robot what to do next."

Since my students - especially the females - did not have such toys or programs to develop their interest in engineering, they could discuss what made them interested in their field and at what age. They could brainstorm ways to develop this interest in young children.

What could be particularly challenging is having students read the descriptions of how each toy works, and what it is designed to do. This not only gives examples of process descriptions, but could also inspire students to think of toys they would design for children to hone S.T.E.M. skills.

For more material related to this topic, see my posts Girls who code (24 August 2014) and Inspiring tomorrow's engineers (18 May 2014).

Problematic issues of driverless cars

Most of my engineering students love reading and talking about cars, so the technology of autonomous vehicles is very interesting for them. In my recent posts I've focused on this topic, and plan to use material related to this in my upcoming winter semester.

An article from the BBC News website questions why these vehicles will "take much longer to reach mass adoption than tech utopians like Google would have us believe" (What's putting the brakes on driverless cars?).

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33676388

Since my students are also "tech utopians," they tend to understand and agree with Google's arguments for why autonomous vehicles are a good thing, which are mostly based on statistics showing that autonomous cars are safer than those with drivers. (See the blog post about this written by Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car program at https://medium.com/backchannel/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-google-self-driving-car-46fc9f3e6088.)


However, for students to understand opposing issues (or how non-techies think), it would be useful for them to consider problematic issues. They could first brainstorm these, possibly taking into account objections they've already heard or read about.

They could then compare their ideas with those presented in the BBC article.

The article identifies 6 "main challenges":

1. Ethical dilemmas - There are doubts over whether the technology will ever become sophisticated enough to handle difficult ethical decisions.
2. Who's to blame - If there is a crash or a fatality, who will be liable? The car owner, the car manufacturer, the maker of the specific piece of equipment that failed, the software company?
3. The technology isn't good enough yet - There are a number of conditions in which the safety equipment of these cars is not yet sufficient.
4. Standards, standards - Since driverless cars may need to communicate with each other, will the industry be able to agree on a technological standard for these systems?
5. Security risks - Connectivity presents security risks related to hacking.
6. Do we even want them - Many people love driving, and being in control is related to that.

In addition to the article, there are reader comments - 345 of them!Students could scan the comments to see which issues most people focus on, both pro and con.

This material could be used to prepare for persuasive speaking or writing tasks in which students try to focus on convincing skeptics to accept a future of driverless cars. Which persuasive appeals would they use for which concerns? People who love to drive cars, for example, would probably not be convinced by technology statistics.

This would help students to consider a variety of audiences, and how their persuasive techniques would have to be suited to each type of audience.

Impact of autonomous commercial vehicles

Image of video from University of Kaiserslautern

In my last post, I discussed an article on the Factor website that predicated a number of businesses that would be developed due to driverless cars. These businesses would, of course, have an impact on the economy and on society.

Another article from that website looks specifically at the impact of autonomous commercial vehicles - the article says that they will "disrupt our jobs, public services and lives ... and there's nothing we can do to stop them."

That sounds rather ominous, although the article does not predict a doomsday scenario. The article further states that these commercial vehicles "have the potential to disrupt our daily lives and we should start to plan for their impact."

Link to article:

http://factor-tech.com/feature/autonomous-commercial-vehicles-will-shape-our-jobs-and-lives 

The article also has a link to a video (1:13) from the University of Kaiserslautern, which has a team working on autonomous commercial vehicles.

Students could first brainstorm the ways in which autonomous commercial vehicles will "disrupt our jobs, public services and lives," and then could consider how we "should start to plan for their impact."

In particular, students could think of the different industries where these kinds of vehicles are likely to have the most impact.

The article refers to these industries:

• garbage trucks
• construction diggers
• delivery trucks
• work by public authorities
• work on construction sites
• taxi services (such as Uber)
• robot builders
• mining industry
• agriculture vehicles
• modern tractors
• mobile bucket excavators
• landscaping tasks
• all types of trucks

After brainstorming, students can see how many of these they thought of, and which other ideas they had that are not mentioned in the article.

Since a number of predictions are made about which industries will be impacted, and what the vehicles will be doing, there are many useful collocations of what machines do. For example:

• a garbage truck drives down the road and picks up trash
• a digger creates a trench
• a truck pulls into its stop to make a delivery
• a robot builder lays up to 1,000 bricks
• an 18-ton excavator performs landscaping tasks
• an excavator loads a truck

The article is about various possible future impacts, so there are many examples of hedging, uncertainty, and conditionals. Students could focus on these to see how they are used when the writer/speaker is only suggesting a possibility, rather than stating a certainty.

Some examples:

• Self-driving cars could be on our roads within 10 years
• ..., but in most cases they're a long way from being used
• Such a machine may not be fully autonomous
• ..., but you could reduce the people who work with such machines
• ... and if something goes really wrong
• ... robot arms which perhaps catch the garbage
• ... if Elon Musk's Tesla can produce 500,000 self-driving cars by 2020
• ... it's highly likely that commercial vehicles will become ...
• ..., although Berns warns that "it's not so easy to transfer."
• ... there are many small, incremental steps that need to be overcome before ...

In discussing the various future possibilities of  autonomous commercial vehicles, the article presents a number of advantages and disadvantages (which students can also brainstorm). Some of the possibilities presented could be either an advantage or a disadvantage - it would be interesting to see how students would classify them.

For example, these vehicles would:

• reduce the number of people who work
• allow machines to control themselves
• increase efficiency
• be more capable
• reduce accidents
• react inconsistently in different environments

A final language point of the article is the number of useful linking/transition words, including:

• while
• but
• yet
• if
• because
• like
• although
• as well as
• then
• whether
• meanwhile
• despite
• in large part
• similar to
• for example
• as
• particularly
• even
• in part
• to this end
• in other words
• so far
• unlike
• so
• even if
• for instance

Within the article there is a reference to a BBC news article (Autonomous trucks: Daimler seeks licence for road tests), which is short (298 words) and very simply written.

The BBC article:  http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33675934

All in all, not only is this article useful for brainstorming and discussion, but there are many useful language points to make students aware of. In addition, it can be used in tandem with the article about autonomous cars to generate ideas and discussion about future impacts of these vehicles on society, economy, business and technology.

Predicting businesses that use driverless cars

In my post of July 18 - Factor magazine website - I wrote about a website that has many useful articles relating to different topics of engineering. The articles are long enough for useful language work, but not so long that they're difficult for students. They are written in a range of registers, which can be useful for raising students' awareness of the range of formality in English.

In that post I mentioned that I would be using articles from that website and sharing my ideas with readers of this blog. An article I chose recently is on the topic of driverless cars - a topic that my engineering students are interested in, regardless of their specific engineering field.

The article is: Drive in style: The self-driving car-based businesses of the future. The article predicts 5 businesses that could emerge due to an increase in use of driverless cars.

Link: http://factor-tech.com/transport/19156-drive-in-style-the-self-driving-car-based-businesses-of-the-future/

Students could first be given the introduction to the article, which gives support for the idea that such businesses are likely to develop. Then, in groups, they could brainstorm ideas of which businesses they predict.

Alternatively, the students could be shown the 5 visuals accompanying each idea in the article and try to think of the type of business it is illustrating.

The five businesses predicted are:

1. Personalized driverless city tours
2. Self-driving cannabis dispensary
3. Driverless commuter gym
4. Autonomous on-the-go office
5. Travelling movie theater

If students hadn't thought of any of these ideas, they could discuss their opinion of them. Do these seem likely? How successful do students think they would be? What impact do students think these businesses will have on the economy, on society, on our future lifestyle? Do these ideas promote further ideas of the students?

In addition to using the article as a topic for discussion, there are many interesting language features in this article for students to be aware of.

There are many idioms and expressions used in the article that are common in English:

• (to) scratch the surface of
• the possibilities are endless
• (businesses) are going to spring up
• tailored to specific needs
• too good to miss
• (businesses could) crop up
• (to) hit the road
• traipsing after
• (to) leave a lot to be desired
• cropping up
• (to) head to work
• (to be) behind the wheel
• (if the idea) took off
• (to) fuel a rise in
• (to be) rolled out

There are also a number of more informal words, in addition to the informal expressions among the choices above. These can be contrasted with some of the standard-to-formal vocabulary in the article:

• a stoner
• comfy
• a 'woah, dude' location
• to spark up
• lugging (something around)

While discussing the topic, students can be made aware of the useful topic-related and business-related vocabulary (which they can use in their discussion):

• to disrupt a business
• new businesses are going to spring up to take advantage of
• tailored to specific needs
• businesses that could crop up
• driverless cars
• autonomous vehicles
• driverless vehicles
• a heads-up display style interface
• augmented reality
• a vending machine
• the cost of owning ... is likely to be too high for the majority
• companies partnering with
• a major part of their jobs
• the autonomous office
• a networked office
• owned by companies for their own workforce's use
• the staple working environment
• location managers
• salespeople
• regional managers
• a relative decline
• the advent of
• to try and counter (something)

Finally, there are useful preposition collocations (including many listed above):

• set to disrupt
• to take advantage of
• tailored to
• select from
• interested in
• complete with
• description of
• attractions around
• built into
• information about
• information on
• the emergence of
• an array of
• cost of owning
• partnering with
• equipped with
• to be owned by
• available in (sizes, colors)
• to take off (phrasal verb)
• to fuel a rise in
• to be rolled out

I plan to use a number of articles on various aspects of autonomous cars (ethics issues, problems getting the general public to accept them, business and insurance issues, etc.). Therefore, by focusing on specific topic-related vocabulary, I will help my students reuse what they learn. This will, in turn, make it easier for them to eventually use this information in a written assignment or presentation.

Descriptions of Pluto's features

The NASA photo accompanying the article

In my last post I wrote about New Horizons website, with news and material related to the Pluto flyby this summer. Now I want to focus on a specific article from the website as an example of how these texts can be used for the type of descriptive language that engineering students would find useful.

I've chosen the article, New Horizons Finds Second Mountain Range in Pluto's 'Heart'.

Link:  http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150721-2

This article provides information about the mountain range and compares it to the larger mountain range that has been named The Norgay Montes. Here is an excerpt from the article that compares the size of the two ranges:

"These newly-discovered frozen peaks are estimated to be one-half mile to one mile (1-1.5 kilometers) high, about the same height as the United States' Appalachian Mountains. The Norgay Montes (Norgay Mountains) discovered by New Horizons on July 15 more closely approximate the height of the taller Rocky Mountains."

There are many comparisons made in the article to describe the mountains' features, even though it is not very long (308 words). Students can notice how this is done in order to use this language in their own writing and presentations. Here are some examples:

Descriptions with adjectives, adverbs, comparatives, etc.:

• a new, apparently less lofty mountain range
• the bright, heart-shaped region
• newly-discovered frozen peaks
• (they) more closely approximate the height of
• the remarkably well-defined topography
• a pronounced difference in texture
• the younger, frozen plains
• the dark heavily-cratered terrain
• a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials
• relatively young
• perhaps less than 100 million years old
• the bright sediment-like material
• as small as a half-mile (1 kilometer) across

Descriptions of location, size:

• the lower-left edge of 
• (are) one-half mile to one mile (1-1.5 kilometers) high
• about the same height as
• (they) approximate the height of the taller Rocky Mountains
• just west of the region within Pluto's heart
• (they) lie some 68 miles (110 kilometers) northwest of
• along the western edge of
• to the east / to the west
• probably dates back billions of years
• the bright circular feature to the lower left of center
• from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers)

In addition to this wealth of useful vocabulary, there are some grammar points that could also be useful. For example, even though most of the text is in the simple present tense, there are some uses of the simple past, present perfect and present progressive that nicely illustrate how these tenses are used. There are also examples of both active and passive voice, and direct and indirect speech. For example:

Contrast simple past tense with present perfect tense:

• NASA's New Horizons mission has discovered a new ...
• The Norgay Montes discovered by New Horizons on July 15 ...

Contrast simple present tense with present progressive tense:

• This newest image further illustrates the remarkably well-defined topography ...
• ... a complex interaction ... that we're still trying to understand.

Contrast active voice with passive voice:

• NASA's New Horizons mission has discovered a new ...
• The Norgay Montes discovered by New Horizons ...
• While Sputnik Planum is believed to be relatively young ...

Contrast direct speech with indirect speech:

• "There is a pronounced difference between ...," said Jeff Moore.
• Moore notes that the bright, ...

Since this language work is part of an extremely interesting article about a topic my students want to know more about, it seems an ideal way to combine topic and language study.

Check out the New Horizons website for more material that can be used this way.

The link: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/