Engineering+2008

Notes and links from discussion groups: At 1:45 there will be a summary of what group talked about last year for those who were not present by Chris. Those topics are all on the wiki from last year. Licia presents some questions that we could discuss this year and suggest we brainstorm others. As a coalition do we want to investigate colleges that serve girl best? Do we want to arm girls with questions to ask? We can do justice to three good topics: Ideas From administration side, how do we facilitate or foster more energy around engineering programs in school, how can we implement these issues? What justifies calling it an engineering class instead of a math or science class? Abbo suggests we continue to under emphasize value of teaching LS programs. Chris asks if we should review what engineering group discussed last meeting as many in this group are new to topic. Do we need engineering classes or integrate engineering into our existing schedules? How can we work as STEM groups rather than individual discplines? How to raise girls' awareness about the cool things in engineering? We decide to first tackle "How can we work as STEM groups rather than individual discplines?" What to do first? Science person say to engineering person incorporate all this that we need covered and volume is impossible to accommodate, physics curriculum is jammed as is so eventually decided that they would design a new course for sophomores and juniors. No time in school year to do much prep, have to develop in summer. At Hockaday we are offering a week-long program in 2010 to help teachers develop engineering components into curriculum At Laurel School, have three engineering courses: Engineering I and II courses which emphasizes the engineering design process. They do case studies (applying the engineering design process to problem-solving), build bridges, robotics and then ethics, economics, alternative energy. Details are available on paper from Licia if you want. Engineering Technology is also offered as a semester course. With a fourth course CAD, under development for next year, this is all part of their Engineering program. Have to get creative to have girls take non AP courses. Laurel alternates AP science courses (except for AP Physics) as well as certain science electives. Engineering I is a prerequisite for Engineering II and Engineering Technology. Ensuring that K-8 curriculum includes engineering is essential for being ready for high school program says Susan from Hathaway-Brown. How to schedule all these things? Even with creative scheduling can't make more time? AP vs non AP conundrum. How to encourage girls to take non AP but rigorous courses. Question came up of how to do away with AP courses, what would it take. One suggestion was to offer AP course as an intermediate level and other courses as advanced. Putting more engineering in K-8 does help with engineering preparedness. Time remains such a big issue, many configurations of paths that lead to common goal. Semester courses are big help. More investigating possibility of semesters. Talked about value and disadvantages of semester courses. (Presentation at 1:00 is about US science-engineering research program and K-8 build-up to it. Then meet back here to continue our conversation.) What are we doing to raise awareness and encourage girls along engineering path? Abbo shared preK - second grade and uses a ball and ramp curriculum with even the littlest girls. They made their own ramps and let their balls go down ramps, they had never done anything like it, built their confidence on their own abilities. Laura totally agrees from her experience, where she always wanted to be an engineer but had no experience with it or playing building blocks, or PVC pipe. To get girls to be aware of the fun of engineering so are not daunted by difficulties which are always a part. Why not use language to help, for example call anatomy class bioengineering class? Change geology to paleobiology. Need to outreach to universities about what is out there, communicate with students and parents about scholarships available The business of word smithing because are so many connotations associated with engineering. Rich says is very difficult to find anyone accurately label what an engineer does or is. Licia says they always ask students how confident they are in their results to encourage them to focus on data as opposed to the confidence or lack of in themselves. Human error (not a good term to use, since we should assume that the error was done by humans. Description of error is more appropriate, for example, incorrect graduated cylinder reading) is not the only source of error and girls personalize error and can't give up sense they must get the right answer. People get mixed messages from different disciplines, in particular math which focuses on right answer. Lisa says she only lets girls work for limited time to do labs no matter how they turn out to encourage process rather than answer. Authentic research underscores this, not cookie cutter labs. Girls with Wrenches is Rich's buzz word for the year.

What about assessments? What role do they play in sending of mixed messages. How to convince girls that it is OK to fail? Cornerstone is to have them get back up and start again. Chris says favorite example is Thomas Edison who says I didn't fail I tried 90 ways that didn't work.

Can begin engineering implementation with ethical case studies then get into other types. Thoughts about what to do to incorporate more engineering? Why was the competition on engineer girl contest just an essay instead of a problem solving task? The whole issue of common language when we talk about engineering is important. Applying engineering design process is different than just doing a project. Define a problem, generate a solution, build etc. Take time to brainstorm a solution to a problem which is the engineering process really. Set up teams to approach problems. Teams of heterogeneous ability. How will we talk to administrators about this so they are also supporters and implementers of change? Advocates of separate engineering course say can avoid resistance of community to change of how it currently do things if just add the course and don't require others to change what they do. Kids have to make choices. It is a matter of education of our constituents to broaden awareness about the advantage of integrating the components of STEM curriculum. Start small, STEM baseline, ask teachers what they already do that incorporates other parts of STEM stuff than their own

Beginning these type of curricula has a big activation energy and can seem overwhelming, often don't know the answers so need to lead the kids to find out for themselves.

Fighting for students. Creative solutions to sharing students--co-teach with others, interdisciplinary if possible. Dena from Holton Arms says that response to faculty distressed as they lose students to another teacher's class as in the case of an engineering course is to begin a conversation within the system as a whole about the nature of a class that is exciting to students, dynamic classes whatever they are to get school to enter a conversation about how to expand these qualities to other courses. Stay away from personality driven changes and focus on interdepartmental and interdisciplinary to spread pedagogically sound approaches. By using authentic interdisciplinary stuff everyone stands to gain. There is a continuum of extent to which one can buy into interdisciplinary from complete sharing to collaborative to parallel.

Any STEM interdisciplinary courses? Idea of just STEM, no disciplines. How to integrate everything into a project, parents are nervous about change that doesn't obviously translate into college acceptance.

On Friday we agree to stay in touch periodically through the ning, which is a social networking site at [|http://isenet.ning.com] Once become a member of isenet (Independent School Educators Network) look for STEM-Engineering group
 * Friday morning session:**

We had Tish, the MIT student member of the panel, talking more with us about service learning opportunities at MIT These seem to keep the women in engineering more than men. Tish say Dr. Damour's presentation of the four things that keep women out of these fields really resonated with her as she had thought them herself.

How do we get girls to tinker? Girl appropriate tinkering materials include colors and topics that are interesting to girls. Taking things apart, like sneakers comparing material properties of high end and cheaper shoes. Bring insides of pieces and have kids guess what whole they are from. Laurel School teacher, Brian Carpenter's US Computer programming to develop math game to offer to MS girls. He is going to have them design a program to schedule electives for school use. Things have to be meaningful to girls. Melissa comments that when she was a child, her dad built her brother and her a small workbench with real tools and scrap lumber and her mother would buy raw materials from rummage sales and they would build stuff. Why shouldn't schools do that. Tish says she was severly disadvantaged by not having a class like that. Discussion of other opportunities like that and how exciting they are for the girls. Abbo mentions LS had a special day each rotation of exploration at which he put together a woodworking course building horses and ramps with hand tools. Tish is asked about computer programming and mentions that it was not available. We talk about how to interest girls in doing that.Just offering an AP computer class will not get them hooked so develop a class in which girls use computer programming for a purpose. The purpose can also be integrating with other classes as they do at Girls Middle School where computer class is required all three years, includes programming languages as well as web design and robotics control. Stagecast is a program that introduces the language of programming, can make movies, games etc. Tish says that learning MatLab without having known any computer languages in high school and the learning curve has resulted in her choosing courses with real building rather than computer courses. She is not learning any computer languages, does get exposed to design software like Solidworks-- Sketch-up is another but all this is optional. Tish is also asked whether she thinks that girls want to do things but in the presence of boys end up helping and then get shoved aside. Those girls may become leaders in drawing blueprints instead of actual building. Solidworks is a great program, need to incorporate carefully to make best use of it, it is heavy duty so give plenty of time to it because it has a learning curve. "The T and E in the middle of the S and M that need some attention" Let the kids tinker. Give them Sketch-up and have them play with a goal of some product.

Are there useful science resources site where ideas-projects are compiled available on web? Not for free, we should provide service for each other on the ning. Let others know what you have tried and what works etc.

Tish mentions that some kids that she knows are working on a portable solar cooker that can be used anywhere without electricity available. Some kids working on using the Wie to do rehabilitation in countries where people are not available for physical therapies etc. Licia describes kids testing roof top materials and heat transfer as prelude to solar cooker idea.

How about using Smartboard as Wie style interactive?

Ask Tish her thoughts about success, she had to come to the realization that she doesn't have to be great at everything, find what you are good at and that will be it. Issues for women are that of being the "Super" woman and must do it all. Where does that come from? Is it a stereotype? Is this true? What about male stereotypes and their affect?

Engineering programs push best and brightest kids away by culture. Is changing. Laura mentions that as undergrad at Colorado School of Mines was boot camp and felt like teachers wanted them to fail whereas graduate work at Stanford, profs were positive.

Still need to prepare girls for not being at top in broader community of college compared to high school. Why do they not take change of status as well as males.