Sun Curve Challenge

From OER Commons Wiki

Revision as of 18:59, 29 May 2009

ISKME announces the Sun Curve Design Challenge, a partnership with INKA, the creator of the Sun Curve hydroponic 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.

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 Middle and High School Science 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 8th-10th, through problem-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 www.inka.fm, 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. [www.oercommons.org 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 here

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 build working models for The Sun Curve Challenge. The project challenge is to design, document, and build a working model for an affordable and renewable way to grow food and other useful plants. Beginning in the fall, the competition would require student-led design teams to integrate their studies into a working design. Each team must create a video of their investigation and design process and build a model system using repurposed and affordable materials, for example, by spending under $150. Students and teachers may have training sessions at a local machine shop for hands-on practice with design and engineering techniques. Teams will contribute to curriculum through documenting their student-led design and prototyping experiences. In the following spring, a review panel, made up of teachers, community members, and project partners will select up to three student team designs to be refined and featured, in partnership with the Bay Area Maker Faire exhibit.

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

• 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

• Submit video presentations here.

Timeline: Spring 2009 – Spring 2010

Spring 2009: Announce Sun Curve and recruit schools, teachers, and other participants at the Maker Faire, San Mateo County Expo Center May 30-31

Summer 2009: Summer training and professional development workshop for teachers to integrate concepts and practice around collaboration, sustainable design, and Sun Curve subject matter

Fall 2009: Sun Curve programs and demos in participating schools provide support and team coaching for students and teachers

Spring 2010: Debut Sun Curve designs at Maker Faire event and select best-of designs to feature and refine

Design Award Categories

Most innovative design

Best use of renewable resources

Most creative

Best video presentation