7/3/15 Describe the goals of your internship as they relate to your work as an educator.
The goals for my internship are written in bold type below followe by my response to the assignment.
Nanotechnology Group Objectives for RET & YS
- Apply understanding of sensing technologies & system design toward the fabrication of a One Health inspired wearable sensor system.
- Develop educational lessons with focus on one or more of the following: one health, energy harvesting, sensing, system design, e-textiles, nanotechnology, and/or engineering design/prototyping.
- Create infrastructure around One Health Competition to allow for staged growth & program sustainability.
- As an educator, it is my responsibility to teach my students the relationship that exists between humans, animals and the environment in this One Health Concept. Students need to understand how our human actions have an impact on the lives of animals and the environment in which we live. My efforts to accomplish this task will be assisted through my understanding of the ways in which data can be collected about our bodies, that of animals and the abiotic factors that exist in our environment (temperature, humidity, etc). It is necessary to present this information to my students in a manner that makes sense to them and has importance for them. The Engineering Design Process is the format that will be taken to facilitate this process. I am designing a case for the Arduino Lily Pad while in the process of collecting data for the prevention of heat exhaustion and stroke. This information will be applied toward the prevention of damaging heat effects in animals. My team’s research includes effects of heat exhaustion and heat stroke and associated temperature ranges, efforts of weather-related agencies to prevent these conditions in the population, especially the elderly, relevance to the animal population, available devices for data collection and their applicability to the animal population for preventive methods as well.
- We are also designing a sensor system for our Arduino Lily Pad to detect temperature changes and provide warnings when the temperature rises toward dangerous limits. One member’s focus is the relationship of temperature change to the occurrence of seizures in her students. She is also sharing that information with our team. Our project represents the combined knowledge of the above to detect and prevent the conditions that would lead to heat exhaustion, heat stroke and seizures.
- Environmental Stewardship is a part of the focus which I wish to share with my students; teaching them to take responsibility for the actions of humans and their effect on the animals and the environment. I believe that students will make small, incremental changes in their behavior when they see the effects that their actions have on those organisms around them and the environment. I also believe that they will use their influence to educate others and stimulate change or consideration of change in others’ actions as well.
- The information which we are being taught is being incorporated into unit plans which will achieve this results. The Engineering Design Process is the appropriate vehicle to get students involved in solving open-ended problems. They will create their own design systems, test them after completing research and arriving at conclusions that benefit their existing comprehensive level while increasing their knowledge of real-world problems. Through collaborative teams, students will solve more complex problems, here-to-fore unimaginable by them. Their outcomes will, hopefully, motivate them to engage in this procedure more frequently, which improves their attitudes toward problem-based approaches with new and challenging scenarios. We want our students to operate on higher cognitive levels and this approach will provide the format for that to occur. It is also what researchers are looking for in the laboratory setting from their employees.