Friday, November 14, 2014

Building Future Engineers

A goal of this blog is to promote teaching young people the engineering method. I have spent over twenty years teaching middle and high school students engineering. I think the best way to teach engineering is by doing engineering with a minimum of lecture time and and a maximum lab time. The labs or projects need to be interesting and relevant to kids. We try to create labs where students use math as a tool that saves them time when doing the engineering project. We explain the underlying science ideas or better yet we try to get the students to rediscover these concepts. The sweet spot is a class that is both engaging and academically rigorous.
I will provide tips and trick for teaching kids engineering as well as news that you might find interesting. Here are some of the topics I will cover:
  • Aviation featuring Fly To Learn
  • Bridges featuring West Point Bridge Designer
  • Programming including Scratch,Python and C++
  • Physical computing — think Arduino
  • Raspberry Pi Computing
  • Robotics featuring LEGO EV3, NXT and Tetrix
I have linked a local TEDx talk I did in Charlotte last year. It explains my views on teaching children. I am very curious what you think and I hope you will share your ideas.

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