Thanks for continuing to follow my blog and letting me share my classroom experiences with you. This Summer, I’d like to take you away from my usual location at Gateway High School, and direct you to a new set of students and activities taking place at the Boys & Girls Club in Trenton, NJ.
First, let me back things up a bit and provide you with some background information. For the last three summers, I have been running a summer camp located at the Trenton Boys & Girls Club, which we call Future Engineers. The camp itself is just one function of a larger grant project, also called Future Engineers, which provides camps, after school enrichment programs and professional development throughout the year, in order to enhance K-12 Engineering Education in New Jersey. The grant itself is funded by the Martinson Family Foundation, and housed within the Center for Excellence in STEM Education, located within the department of Technological Studies at The College of New Jersey. This summer, I have 75 students, ages 9-15, enrolled in Future Engineers for a total of eight weeks. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this month, Chris Better and I took a team of five students to participate in the NJ Envirothon for the first time. In fact, we were the first team comprised of “Technology Education/Engineering” students, as the other teams were all assembled by their schools’ science teachers. There were 47 teams participating in total this year. People were quite receptive to our participation because the whole theme of the event was based around solving environmental problems, particularly those dealing with water conservation. Read the rest of this entry »
Out here in New Jersey, public schools were recently told to prepare for budget cuts across the state in every district. In the spirit of the sustainable design challenges and problem solving activities that we have been giving students all year, our current situation presented us a REAL problem to solve. Next year, we might have less money to buy new supplies, so it is important to conserve now. However, we want to continue giving students fresh design challenges that deal with sustainability and the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), as well as other 21st century skills such as innovation, critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration. Read the rest of this entry »
For the past couple of months we’ve been working hard on a project that uses the exciting technology and images of Google Earth to show how energy is used and produced all over the world. We call it the GM Google Earth Project.
Wow were do I start? You have heard of the journey of life…well, I am on the journey of alternative fuel discovery. And so are my students. My latest big event brought me to NSTA (the National Science Teachers Association convention in Philadelphia). As an auto shop teacher I felt a little bit like a fish out of water. Nevertheless this fish is growing wings, just like in the Discovery Education movie “Life,” which I got to see on an Imax screen at one of the fun conference night events. As a green auto shop teacher collaborating with the science department, it was a great experience for me to be at this mecca of science conventions with more than 10,000 attendees. Read the rest of this entry »
And here we are, back in Michigan. 500 hours of planning, 30 hours of manning a booth, 3,500 recycled newspaper pencils and 350 bamboo USB drives later, NSTA’s 2010 national conference is officially over.
As one who works behind the screen most of the time, it was a really really awesome experience for me to get to meet the teachers on the other side of the screen and be able to give away resources that they could take back to their classrooms. Read the rest of this entry »
The technology to run a car on electricity already exists. In fact, the electric car has been around for more than 100 years. To see this technology first for myself I went down to Mr. Thomas Alva Edison's house in West Orange, NJ. Both of these cars were made by Detroit Electric.
Hi, I am Ron Grosinger, an alternative fuel educator at a high school in New Jersey.
Last spring, during a pilot after school club, we converted a gasoline-powered car into an electric vehicle. With the success of the club, we have expanded it to create two Alternative Fuel classes during the day. In one of these courses, I have partnered with another science teacher to create a class named The Science of Alternative Fuels where students learn the chemistry of how different fuels work. In this blog, I will post lessons and success stories from my classes. Read the rest of this entry »
“Maglev” is a term used to describe the levitation of an object using the repelling forces of magnets. If you have ever tried to force two magnets together with like poles facing one another, you have felt the repelling force.
To start off 2010, we are still working on our Solar Energy unit that I blogged about in my last post. In this post you saw examples of the circuits and housings for the solar panels that the students had designed and constructed. Now, those circuits are being integrated into everyday products in order to give use to portable wireless power. Read the rest of this entry »
Our teachers and volunteers sometimes tell the stories better than we do. The following post was written by Lowell Bailey, a high school science teacher who shares his classroom experiences learning about water quality and the local watershed in his area with GREEN.
I’m in my 25th year in the classroom and I teach 11th- and 12th-grade environmental science and earth science at Bedford-North Lawrence High School just outside Bedford, Indiana. I am the Science Club sponsor and our Envirothon team has gone on to the state level of the competition four of the last seven years. I love doing anything outdoors, like hiking and camping, and I enjoy collecting rocks, minerals, and fossils. Read the rest of this entry »
