Growing food indoors efficiently

Photo from Engadget website

In my last post I wrote about BlinkScan. Another shortlisted Innovation in the Engadget Insert Coin Competition is GrowCubes -- the Readers' Choice Award.

The GrowCubes System, designed by Chris Beauvois, is an innovation that grows plants indoors with "aeroponics," which uses mist instead of water to keep the plants nourished. In this way, plants and vegetables can be grown faster, all year round. The cubes are each 2 meters square in size, and are stackable. The environment of the plants can be controlled by an iOS app.

The system is described in more detail in this article:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/08/insert-coin-growcubes-hands-on/

This article also includes a concise process description of the GrowCubes System.

The following link has a video (3:20) which shows how the system works:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/17/growcubes/

The narrator speaks very clearly, at a slow tempo, and the background music is quiet enough not to interfere with listening comprehension. So it is appropriate for less advanced students.

My students found the device very interesting, but disagreed about who would use it, and where. They felt that although the device is described as not needing much room, it looks like it would be too large for private use (for example, an average apartment). In addition, the space between rotating shelves doesn't look as if it is high enough for some of the vegetables pictured in the video as examples of what you can grow. It is expected to sell for $2,000 per unit, so might not be affordable for a private consumer.

However, students brainstormed other uses, focusing on where and in which situations the need for this device would be greatest. This discussion was very creative, and useful for developing students' speaking skills and functions of agreeing/disagreeing and persuasion.

Scanning multiple objects at once

Photo: Blink Technologies

In my last few posts I've been writing about the finalists in the Engadget Insert Coin Competition. In this post I'll look at BlinkScan.

This innovation is a scanner that copies multiple objects or images at one time, and produces separate images for each, automatically cropping out the background.

Blink Technologies website:  http://blinkscan.com/

On the website of Blink Technologies, which created BlinkScan, there is information about the innovation. Although there's not much text, the accompanying video can be very useful in the classroom because it is short (1:22) and the narrator speaks slowly and clearly. The video shows a scanning demonstration in which 47 coins are placed on the scanner, and each one is made into a separate file image with the background cropped out.

At the time of this post, the product is not yet commercially available, but is expected to cost about $1000 for the commercial market it is aimed at. An article about the innovation on the Engadget website says that the businesses interested in BlinkScan include "archivists and curators of museums, as the scanner's ability to scan multiple documents and objects at once while producing separate, high-quality files for each is a huge timesaver. Graphic artists, coin merchants and stamp collectors are also interested in the device for similar reasons."

Engadget website:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/12/engadget-show-47/

This link also has a video (11:27) of highlights of the event.

Both the Engadget article and the video on the Blink technologies website provide useful material for a short, focused process description, either spoken or written, for students to use as a model.

Device for home automation

In my last post I wrote about MyBell, one of five finalists in the Engadget Insert Coin Competition. Another finalist is Smart Power Strip.

This article describes the Smart Power Strip:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/08/smart-power-strip

This device is described as "a power strip with a little extra." It has a built-in WiFi module, and the controls let you turn the individual outlets on and off using a smartphone and the company's proprietary app. And this can be done remotely, so you can check which of your appliances are on, or turn them on or off before you get home. It also has a power-consumption tracker so you can see how much energy your appliances are using.

Most of my students agreed that this would be very useful, and since they already have smartphones, they were able to discuss which appliances they would like to manipulate remotely.

In addition to information about the product, the article noted above has a simple explanation of how the device works, which would be a good example text for students learning how to write process descriptions.

I'll check up on this innovation in the next few months to find out when it will be available commercially. The article says the device will be "cheap," so it might really be something my students would buy.

This link has a video (11:27) of highlights of the Insert Coin event:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/12/engadget-show-47/

There is information about the Smart Power Strip on the website Kickstarter - a website for inventors and innovators to describe their ideas and seek funding for their products:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/337922278/smart-power-strip-control-your-appliances-from-any

Customizable bicycle bell

Photo from Mybell Inc.

In my last post I wrote about the Engadget website. In the next few posts I will highlight the top five finalists of the Engadget Insert Coin Competition: "The best of crowd-funded hardware projects."

This link as a video (11:27) of highights of the event:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/12/engadget-show-47

One of the five finalists is MYBELL, a "digital noisemaker" that is mounted on the handlebars of a bike, and plays customized sound or music (you can upload any MP3 file) at up to 96 dB (loud!). It also has LEDs for nighttime visibility, for which different LED patterns can be chosen.

This article describes the gadget further:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/08/mybell-hands-on/

The product is said to increase safety for the rider and to "improve the relationship between bikers and drivers" since the sounds chosen can be less obnoxious than air horns.

This 42-second video clip shows how it works:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/08/mybell-hands-on/

I wasn't sure why this gadget was chosen as a finalist in this competition, since it didn't seem so important to me. But my students thought it was "cool" and liked the idea for their own bicycles. They said the device is simple, inexpensive and effective. So what's wrong with that?

In my next post I will look at another finalist in this competition.

Website for techies

A great source of material for all areas of ESP (particularly areas related to engineering and technology) Engadget is a techology blog that has the format of an online magazine.It describes itself as "a news, reviews and opinion outlet with obsessive coverage of cutting edge gadgets, consumer electronics and the science and technology they're built upon."

http://engadget.com

In addition to English, there are International Editions in German, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.

The sections of the English edition include News, Reviews, Features, Shows, Forums, and More (which includes "latest videos").

My students found the Reviews section particularly useful, and it covers:

• mobile
• photography
• gaming
• computers
• peripherals
• personal tech
• networking
• storage
• home theater

I had students look at some reviews for cell phones (their choice which ones) and we noted how the positive and negative features were presented, how comparisons were made, and how point of view was expressed. We used these examples as models for student-generated "reviews" of their gadget of choice.

Once students were introduced to this website via this activity, they found plenty of other areas of interest, and are motivated to read further reviews and the news articles on their own.

New Technical English Newsletter

Inch by Inch is a new website that presents two pictorials of labeled pieces of technology, and sends them in a free newsletter each week to subscribers. This is not only useful for teachers of technical English, but a great resource for students in all engineering disciplines.

http://inchbyinch.de

The resource is from Germany, and so focuses on German learners of English (with bilingual translations), but the visuals and vocabulary are useful for learners from any language background. It is particularly useful for lower level learners who will find the visual material very clear.

The first website page has pictorials of the following terms:

• sprinkler head
• escalator / moving stair
• ball bearing
• LED
• scissors
• bolt
• suspension bridge

The description of the resource on the website is:

"Every engineer knows: A picture is worth a thousand words. So, for a learner of technical English two tech pictorials a week would surely equal 2000 technical words, right?

Unfortunately, learning technical English isn't that easy. It's a slow and steady process, but pictures and drawings can certainly make it easier to learn and remember technical terms -- especially for visually oriented learners like us.

That's why we have set up this free newsletter with two tech pictorials per week to improve your knowledge of technical English -- inch by inch."

This is certainly a resource I will recommend to students, and I'll be letting you know in a future blog post how we work with this in and out of the classroom.

What do you know about email?

For most of my students, email has existed their entire lives. So they don't generally think about how it all started. Even though I'm old enough to remember life before email, I wasn't sure how it started, or by whom, or when or where or why.

In fact, the other day a student's question sparked some interesting discussion about email: How do you spell it? A variety of spellings are used in different sources: email, e-mail, Email, E-mail, eMail.

This discussion focused on what we knew about email, and since there were inconsistent answers, this lead us to look into email's history.

Some of the material my students found:

An Infogram on the history of email (both links from Mashable):
http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/email.png
http://mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/email.png

Similar information in a different format:
http://mashable.com/2012/09/20/evolution-email/

This later version adds the years 2011 and 2012. Students could do the same: each student or each group can find a piece of information about email from 2012 and 2013 (and soon 2014), and then share their choices and vote for the one that will be added to the timeline.

Another timeline:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1167303/timeline_a_brief_history_of_email.html

My students liked discussing the information on the link below, and are currently looking for more "fascinating facts" to add. #6 refers to the different spellings. This also has information about what the @ symbol is called in different languages - interesting imagery! Some of my students didn't know what it is called in English.

10 Fascinating facts about e-mail
http://mashable.com/2011/01/26/e-mail-facts/

How do you spell e-mail?

One-year anniversary of this blog

My first post was on 30 November 2012, so today this blog is one year old!

As I look back at one year of posts, I see that a lot of material has been about robots. I do teach a number of robotics engineering groups, but I find that robotic devices are relevant for my other engineering students as well: biomedical engineering, electronics engineering, information technology, computer science, etc. It also seems to me that even non-engineering students find robots interesting. After all, what would science fiction films be without them?

I also see that I have focused a lot on material for process descriptions. I find this text type comes up in every kind of course I teach - even my academic English groups. So much of what we write and read is some kind of process, so I think this is very relevant for our students. Reading texts, listening to videos, focusing on various aspects of writing, encouraging speaking/discussion - there are so many ways to focus on process description.

And another area I see a lot in my posts is information about innovation. ESP students are always interested in innovations, especially in their field, and they will of course be part of innovations in their professional lives. So any innovation provides material for the classroom.

Over the year I have shared material I have found, but there are a few websites in particular that I keep going back to for ideas for my courses. Here are the ones I've used the most (and the date of the post when I first mentioned them):

December 2012

• Engines of our Ingenuity radio program: http://www.uh.edu/engines/

• Technical word of the week newsletter: http://newsletter.thepyramidgroup.biz/

March 2013

• The Innovations Report website: http://www.innovations-report.com/index.php

May 2013

• Planetary Radio:  http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/

June 2013

• Comics English: http://www.comicsenglish.com

July 2013

• Readlang (especially to recommend to students): http://readlang.com/

September 2013

• News in levels (especially for my lower level students): http://www.newsinlevels.com/

And many posts with material from the BBC news website, section technology:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology

During the year I have gotten positive feedback from many areas: readers of this blog, colleagues, other teacher bloggers - but most importantly from my students. They have usually been very enthusiastic about the material I've used in class, and they're very motivated to give me further suggestions.

For the future -- I'm always looking for articles, videos and websites on topics that engage my students, and lately some of my students have given me suggestions about website they've found that had news they were interested in. So I'll be using my students' suggestions more, and continue to indicate what we did with the material. If you know of other interesting websites and material, please let me know and I'll post it here.

RoboRoach: innovation and ethics

Photo copyright Backyard Brains

On 22 March 2013 my post was about Biobots - cyborg cockroaches fitted with a wireless control system and used to find victims of disasters such as earthquakes. I mentioned in that post that my students discussed ideas for further uses of such a biobot.

One use now available - which did not come up in that discussion - is implanting a wireless control on a cockroach in order to teach children about neural microstimulation.

This is the RoboRoach, developed by Backyard Brains, and described on their website as "... the world's first commercially available cyborg. With our RoboRoach you can briefly wirelessly control the left/right movement of a cockroach by microstimulation of the antenna nerves. The RoboRoach is a great way to learn about neural microstimulation, learning, and electronics."

The RoboRoach is available as a kit which children can order to implant the device themselves, and carry out the microstimulation experiment. It is available for $99.99 each, and is marketed to children and school classes.

Website of Backyard Brains: https://backyardbrains.com/

Information about RoboRoach: https://www.backyardbrains.com/products/roboroach

The innovation is quite interesting, and it generated a discussion in my classes about further innovations using similar technology. The website contains a lot of information about the control device itself and about the "surgery" necessary to implant the device. The latter is also explained on a video, also on the website. These sources are great material for process description, both written and spoken.

Video with surgery instructions: http://wiki.backyardbrains.com/RoboRoach_Surgery

But another aspect of the RoboRoach is that of the ethical concerns it raises. Some of these concerns are dealt with on the website, as comments about criticism. The criticisms noted and responded to are:

• This is simply a toy, not a scientific instrument
•  Modifying a living creature to make a toy is wrong
• The RoboRoach is pseudoscience
• This enables and encourages kids to harm animals

Ethical considerations:

http://wiki.backyardbrains.com/Ethical_Issues_Regarding_Using_Invertebrates_in_Education

My students found these ethical questions to be one of the most interesting aspects of this innovation. The groups I used this with were Electronics/Business, Biomedical Engineering and Robotics Engineering groups.

Although no one thought it was unethical to harm roaches (we do that anyway, don't we?), my students thought this could perhaps eventually lead to experiments using other animals, for example cats or dogs. Many felt it is okay for such experiments to be conducted in school under the supervision of a teacher, but that making this device available for children to experiment at home could lead to less educational uses. My students had a lively debate about where such experimentation would end, and whether we should create guidelines for eventual uses or stop it now.

I found the material about this innovation to be extremely useful for:

• Process Description - of the device and of the surgery to implant the device
• Discussion of impact of the engineering innovation
• Ethics discussion on the uses of the device
• Debate about the pros and cons of experimentation with invertebrates

For further material, there is an article about the RoboRoach in Popular Science:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-12/how-build-your-own-cockroach-cyborg 

Small car for city use

Photo copyright Lit Motors

Lit Motors has developed the C-1, a "fully-enclosed, all electric vehicle that is a motorcycle in all but name," according to an article on BBC News website (section Future). The article describes the vehicle as a "hi-tech, streamlined egg on two wheels."

Link to article: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130630-super-shrinking-the-city-car

My engineering students are always interested in innovations relating to cars, and this article presents not only interesting information about the innovation, but also different kinds of language work.

The information focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of this vehicle (which students can add to) and presents the pros and cons of the C-1 being classified as a motorcycle or not. In this description, there is a lot of language referring to size and comparison. For example:

• most
• twice as many
• cut in half
• less / more
• fewer / more
• very few
• halving the length / width
• much less so than

In addition, the description includes useful technical vocabulary for cars, and vocabulary useful for the text type of process description. This includes the kinds of examples I tell my students to use so that a non-engineer would understand the description. For example:

• Imagine if you could cut the size of a car in half, ...
• ... looks like a hi-tech, streamlined egg on two wheels.
• A spinning disc has a tendency to stay upright, just like a child's spinning top.
• If you were ever made to hold a spinning bicycle wheel horizontally at school then you will have experienced the physics at work.

Finally, there is a good variety of linking and transition words for students to notice, and examples of modals and "if" clauses.

The article refers to an earlier innovation - the Smart Fortwo - so I showed a picture of each vehicle and had students discuss the pros and cons of each (which would they rather drive and why; which would be more efficient on the road, etc.).

In general, my students found this topic very interesting, and the short, focused article was workable even for my lower-intermediate groups.