Sun Curve Challenge
From OER Commons Wiki
ISKME announces the Sun Curve Design Challenge, a partnership with INKA, the creator of the Sun Curve aquaponic garden and laboratory and ISKME's OER Commons project, to challenge teachers and students to produce new OER materials and incorporate green design thinking into the classroom.
Contents |
Introduction
Challenge: If you had to grow your food using efficient and sustainable processes, where would it take you? What science and technology could support your ideas?
Imagine: An eighth-grade science teacher wants to engage students in experiential learning and scientific inquiry, including data gathering, and discovery, and hands-on design and testing of students' own ideas around climate change, plants, and renewable energies.
Where can teachers tap into resources that they can fit into their classroom needs?
How can students experience the issues and get their hands dirty in the process?
The Sun Curve Challenge
A competition focusing on contemporary issues in environmental science, renewable energy, agriculture, and technology.
ISKME is bringing together K-12 Teachers and their Students from around the Bay Area to develop an educational program and student competition using hands-on methods and open-source curriculum for science inquiry and design innovation.
Goals:
- To educate and inspire students, grades Kindergarden-12th, through challenge-based learning and student-led design using alternative energy sources and sustainable growing systems
- To build awareness for Open Educational Resources (OER), stimulate the creation of new OER materials around a timely and motivating subject, and support students and teachers in using various technologies (wikis, blogs, video) and collaborative processes
- To facilitate students, teachers, and other participants to be makers of learning and reflect upon their design processes to help new groups of student innovators to invent and continuously improve the program and learning materials.
Partnering with Sun Curve
Sun Curve, created by INKA, and inventor-sculptor, Paul Giacomantonio, is an experiential and experimental laboratory system. The first large-scale prototype is currently installed at the Coyote Point Museum for Environmental Education in San Mateo. Its system combines hydroponic, organic food production with aquaculture, renewable materials, and solar energy in a self-contained laboratory system. Through The Sun Curve Challenge project, the Sun Curve installation and its inventors can serve as points of inspiration for teachers and students to study the science involved and to challenge themselves to build their own working solutions to challenges of food production and environmental impact. ISKME will create, support, and mentor teachers and students on processes for online collaboration and use, adaptation, and creation of open materials. OER Commons, the network for open teaching and learning materials created by ISKME, will provide the online infrastructure for the collaborative creation and distribution of new curricula.
Work Plan:
Participants will be expected to:
- Collaborate in an online workspace where students and teachers can find resources, communicate, and safely share with each other. ISKME personnel can provide school-based workshops about the Sun Curve and related resources. Subject matter can include: aquaponics (substrate investigation, water quality), plant science (photosynthesis, pollinators, botany, nutrients) human biology (agriculture, nutrition), marine biology (anatomy, health, types of fish), polyculture (companion planting), renewable energy (solar, wind, human powered), and industrial design, sculpture, sustainable practices, and engineering. Curriculum developed for the project will be shared publicly under a Creative Commons License and be included and featured in OER Commons.
- Suggestions for Getting Started
- You will first need to register for an OER Commons account here. Once registered, you will receive a confirmation email. Click on the link in the confirmation email to log in. Once you log in you are ready to begin searching OER, saving OER; to your profile; tagging, rating, and reviewing OER, and submitting materials to OER Commons.
Access some Sun Curve Challenge tagged OER on OER Commons here
Sun Curve Design Challenge Curriculum Matrix
- To schedule an introductory OER training, contact Megan Simmons, Education Program Manager
- Introductory trainings last around thirty minutes and are offered over the phone, via skype or in person if you are located in the San Francisco Bay Area.
- You can access an online OER Tutorial Course here.
- Design and document working models for The Sun Curve Challenge. The project challenge is to design, and document a working model for an affordable and renewable way to grow food and other useful plants. Beginning in the fall, the competition will require student-led design teams to integrate their studies into a working design. Each team must create a video, slide show, or other method to present of their design process for how they addressed this challenge. Teams will contribute to curriculum through documenting their student-led design and prototyping experiences.
- Suggestions for Getting Started
- Set a project goal(s) and prioritize your work plan to meet the goal(s)
Example: See the Project Goal Write Up for the Tofte Project and the step by step design process used by engineers here
Design Process Activity at Sanchez Elementary School
- Make a materials list of what you will need to create your project
Materials Resource: RAFT Resource Area For Teachers, San Jose
- Brainstorm and sketch your ideas for your project
Example: Sun Curve 3.0 Concept Drawing
- Communicate, collaborate, and submit video presentations, photos, etc. on the Sun Curve Design Challenge Ning site.
Timeline: Spring 2009 to Spring 2010
Spring 2009:
Maker Faire
Launch the Sun Curve Design Challenge and recruit schools, teachers, and other participants at the Maker Faire, San Mateo County Expo Center May 30-31, 2009.
- Photos from Maker Faire on flickr of the Sun Curve Installation and Education Day activities here and here
and the Sun Curve Design Challenge poster, student designs and models here
- Article on the Sun Curve Design Challenge exhibit from treehugger.com ISKME teaches kids to design sustainability solutions
- Article in the Half Moon Bay Review Farming a new future
- Maker Faire Blog posting The Sun Curve teaches about natural systems
- Make TV video Aquaponic education and the Sun Curve
Summer 2009:
OER Summer Teaching Academy
Through the OER Commons initiative (www.oercommons.org), ISKME is offering a series of summer courses in teacher professional development using innovation open-source, teacher-led approaches. Our Science, Design, and OER Academy course engages teachers in modeling investigative science and bringing hands-on design to the classroom through using online resources and collaborative tools for teachers to share what they know.
Science educators, classroom teachers, guest scientists, designers, media artists, and knowledge sharing experts will participate in collaborative supports for teachers, resource sharing, experiential science learning, and multi-disciplinary art and design thinking that can be integrated into the participant's teaching practice.
What will teachers gain at ISKME's OER Summer Teaching Academy?
- Active science and multidisciplinary approaches to learning using easy-to-procure lab and art materials
- Open access to lessons and other materials on problem-based learning, especially in environmental studies, sustainable living, green technology, and design thinking
- Practice with finding and sharing resources with others and using online networking and digital media tools and methods and an introduction to licensing that makes content legal to adapt and share online
- Introduction to the Sun Curve Design Challenge, a student-teacher collaboration and competition around new open learning resources
- Continued online support and networking through OER Commons (www.oercommons.org) online network and education programs
July 21, 22, & 23 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
San Mateo County Office of Education 101 Twin Dolphin Drive Boardroom A, Redwood City, CA
Join the Academy by contacting Megan Simmons, ISKME's Education Program Manager megan@iskme.org or 650.728.3322
This workshop is free of charge for 20 teachers.
Please provide the following information: Name; Email; School, Subject, and Grade taught; and if you will be bringing your own laptop
Breakfast and snacks provided by ISKME. Participants are responsible for bringing their own lunch.
Fall 2009:
Sun Curve Design Challenge programs and demos in participating schools provide support and team coaching for students and teachers.
May 2010:
Showcase Sun Curve designs at ISKME's Design Lab: Design the School of the Future at Maker Faire May 22-23, 2010
June 2010:
Teachers as Makers: ISKME's Professional Development Summer Academy June 15-16, 2010
Design Award Categories
A review panel, made up of teachers, community members, and project partners will select up to four student team designs. Awardees will also receive a tour of INKA Biospheric Systems workshop in San Francisco and access to materials to build their working models.
- Most innovative design
- Best use of renewable resources
- Most creative
- Best documentation of design process
Unless specified otherwise, contributions to the OER Commons Wiki are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share-Alike License
The OER Commons Wiki is a project of The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management (ISKME)
