I'm not going to lie I am a sucker for conversions. It has been since high school since I have done them but it was easy to pick them up again. I am struggling to find a STEM project to do with my students. I am trying to find something relevant to my students life and a project that will not result in a revolt in my classroom. It is hard to get materials out in the bush and need to find something we could do with the things we have.
I want a project that they can be successful at we are working on thinking creatively and doing exploitative lesson but it is new to them and they get frustrated easily with it. I know that I want it to relate to their culture. I want to look in to something with the subsistence life style or a water supply since they do not have running water at their house. I don't think I will be using Minecraft with my students due to the fact that I struggle with even logging on when I try to get into it and I don't want to overwhelm all my students with so many new things.
I'm not sure if there anything I can specifically think of. I am pretty go with the flow with this class, since I wasn't really sure what to expect. The science and engineering are areas that I am not strong in so any part of those will help me be successful in teaching them.
The Alaskan Native people have been doing engineering a long time before western contact.
ReplyDeleteSome ideas:
- Design a better fish-wheel
- How about some sort of new method of putting up fish? Vacuum packing may be hard to do at a set-net site, ice can be expensive or unavailable. Smoking fish is pretty labor intensive? I haven't worked at a set-net site so forgive me if this isn't workable :)
- Design a trap for caribou (or other important animal in their subsistence activities) that is safe for other animals (including us!)
- Have the children figure out something involving alternative sources of energy. Cost of power in the bush is typically crazy (diesel generation is something upwards of $0.70/kWh).
I think as a general rule I would ask the students to go home, and find compelling, hard to answer questions that their community is faced with. Present these to the class, and then find some way to group students around some of these challenges and flesh them out.