Before my summer experience with the ASSIST Center at NCSU, the Engineering Design Process was something that I knew about and vaguely understood. I thought it was a glorified scientific process and didn’t see the value in it. Throughout my externship, we were not only exposed to the process, but we were thrown into it, many times. There wasn’t a big production on the terms, like ask, imagine, etc; we just did it. By experiencing the process authentically, I fully “bought” into the process and realize the real-life implication of it.

Let’s just start with the fact that I haven’t written an original lesson plan since college. With textbooks, internet, and WCPSS C-MAPP, I haven’t seen the need to write my own. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely do a lot of adapting and customizing, but they are not original. With my project, we had (have) to write 2 “full-blown” lesson plans and one demo plan. For my first lesson and the demo, I wrote an original plan that involved the kids creating a test to study how active people are using a Fitbit One, wearable device. This relates to my project because the Ftibit has a sensor and sensors have been a big part of our study. I like my plan because it’s related to a real-life problem that NC has with high levels of obesity in 10-17 year-olds and I figured my 6th graders could relate. I am going to pull-in math with graphing data and data analysis. My demo is related to this lesson, as it has participants wearing a Fitbit during two different exercises to figure out how many active minutes they participate in. My second full lesson will involve the kids learning about nanotechnology and size/scale. This lesson has not been written as of this posting. 🙂

I plan to reinforce the Engineering Design Process in my class more this year. Before my externship, I saw the EDP as something that occurred in the science/engineering classroom. Teaching math, I didn’t see the point. However, having gone through the process myself, I now see the value in it and not just “one more thing to do.” I can now speak to the processes that I’m asking my kids to do and will better connect with them on the EDP. I also plan to use digital/print resources that I’ve received to incorporate STEM Nano lessons into my curriculum to provide the real-world context for my kids.

I am fortunate that my school has one-to-one laptops for our middle grades students. This allows me more latitude to use all of the resources we learned about at NCCAT. I’ve been keeping track of new ideas with bookmarks and Evernote. My challenge is going to be figuring out which technology to use to maximize the lesson at any given time. All in all, it’s a challenge I will accept. 🙂

During my Kenan experience, I hope to gain more tools to use in my classroom. Those tools may include useful websites and interactive lesson plans.  The tools also include the knowledge that I’ll learn from connections from other Fellows, my advisers, and project partners. I also expect that the experiences that I’ll have the opportunity to participate in will encourage me to be a stronger leader, stronger teammate and above all, stronger teacher.