Overview
In the wake of The Apocalypto Project (and the subsequent reflection), my teaching partner and I had a few things on our mind. In our next project, we wanted to:
- … do something smaller scale – For our sanity and the sanity of our students and spouses, we wanted to do a project that was a little less intense than Apocalypto.
- … maintain an authentic connection between the physics and humanities content.
- … do a better job of providing an adult world connection. Could we bring in experts for presentation and critique?
- … ensure that each aspect of the project would be accessible to EVERY student, not just those with the inclination.
- … fix the group problem. Spread out the workload and increase individual accountability.
Conception
As part of a previous course of Independent Technical Projects, a student inspired me to explore the hobby of radio controlled (RC) aircraft. A year later I have built and flown multiple aircraft and am thoroughly entrenched in the hobby. I had been entertaining the idea of integrating this into a student project but had yet to come up with a solid idea. My teaching partner was interested in writing some sort of fiction with the students. My mind initially wandered to the adult world success of my previous Seniors2 Project, my memory of the multiple veterans we visited in that home, and my interest in WWII history. I envisioned a project where students would partner with a recent war veteran and interview them for war stories. Students would then write a historical fiction based on their experiences with their veteran partner and their independent research. These war stories would then be exhibited or read while a simulation of the fictitious (but reality based) battle was carried out real-time with student made radio controlled vehicles, boats, and planes. This initial brainstorming even ventured into thoughts of live ammunition (like these brave souls). While I LOVED the excitement we got from students when we shared these ideas, there were serious issues, including:
- The obvious liability of high speed propellers and airborne planes. (not to mention any consideration of projectiles!)
- Unlike high school Seniors (who are often able to transport themselves), freshman are very difficult to transport. Any regular trip to a senior home (or an R/C flying field) would be either expensive (if we chartered a bus) or a nightmare to manage (if we begged for parent volunteers).
- It would be very easy for this to turn into a ‘let’s shoot things!’ project and for students to lose site of the content.
- The electronics and parts to make this happen would be extremely expensive to purchase at this scale.
The next iteration of this idea was much simpler. Let’s restrict the radio controlled devices to boats. Their easier to design and construct and require less expensive equipment. When discussing this with my teaching partner, our pedagogical dialogue quickly dissolved into 3rd grade pirate jokes. One of us made a joke about making pirate boats that try to board each other and voila – our project was born. On the physics and engineering side – students would be designing and building radio controlled RC boats. On the humanities side – students would be learning about land, maritime and digital piracy and what the reality of piracy reveals about ownership, advantage and exploitation.
My Research & Experimentation
Um … how do you build an RC boat? I was confident that I could personally build one but I was very weary about finding the right parts and scaffolding to make it possible for my class to design and build 14 of them in about 6 weeks. After a great deal of online research, I came across my first resource. Dr. Jay Vavra, one of our Biology teachers, had previously been involved with a student project trying to design and fabricate a radio controlled RC marine life collection system (functionally – an RC boat with a net). While he wasn’t personally involved with the engineering of the project he did have some remnants of the project that he was kind enough to loan me as a model. I now had a pair of boat hulls with a motor and drive train installed. I fabricated a rudder with cardboard, a pencil, and a scrap of wood, then threw some miscellaneous airplane electronics into the boat and took it for a spin.
This first experiment made me much more confident that the students could, at a minimum, make a boat that works. For hull construction (which I didn’t have to do) I imagined that students would create some sort of paper mache hull then seal it with some kind of elastomer. At this point my preparation split into two tracks – content preparation and construction preparation.
Narrowing the Content
The primary topics I wanted to cover as part of this project were buoyancy and electricity. I had existing labs and materials for both topics and hoped that we would have time to achieve some significant depth with electricity – learning about pulse-width-modulation, experimenting with electromagnetics, and learning to use a function generator and oscilloscope to control a servo. With these topics in mind I went expert hunting and contacted 15 marine or naval architechts for help with hull design and two local RC hobby clubs for help with electronics. I received quite a few NOs but eventually lined up three guest speakers. A PhD Naval Architect from a local mega-yacht design firm, an Engineer/Salesman from NASSCO who designs and sells ships to the Navy, and a local hobby enthusiast to discuss the theoretical and practical electronics of RC. I was able to schedule coffee with one of them (always a good idea to vet speakers) and had a great working lunch with another. I learned more about hull design in a 40 minute lunch than I knew even existed and the project shifted heavily to the hydrodynamics of hull design.
Making Construction Feasible
I was able to schedule an additional breakfast with a representative of the San Diego Argonauts (a local RC boat club) and again – I learned more about RC boat construction that I knew existed. I was able to ask specific questions about drive trains, motor selection, boat balance, and a number of other nifty things. Unfortunately, I still left without understanding how to do this on the cheap. Even an inexpensive RC boat can contain hundreds of dollars in motors, batteries, servos, and specialty hardware. The students had to make 14 on a budget well under $1,000.
Throughout my other RC escapades I had discovered the wonderful world of cheap Chinese hobby electronics. Select online retailers like HobbyKing and eBay can connect the desperate buyer with mind-blowingly cheap parts that can … when they don’t sizzle and smoke right out of the box … get the job done. I’ll talk more about the procurement process later.
Not long after I had made myself comfortable with the electronics and other guts of the project, I came to realize that (a) I wasn’t sure how we were going to intelligently design the boats, and (b) I had no idea how to construct a boat to match a design? My initial research led me towards using parametric CAD programs built specifically for the design of boat hulls but after an afternoon experimenting with the software – called it quits. I had also hoped for some precision in fabrication using a 3D printer or some other computer-controlled device but because of our very tight schedule – those ideas soon went by the wayside too. I settled on simple hand-sketches of the hulls – front, side, top, back, and water-plane views.
Then came figuring out how to fabricate the hulls once the designs were set. I had a very real fear of a future where students would be hand carving/sanding forms out of wood then trying to cast some to-be-discovered material over their form. Thoughts about the potential mess, physical labor, and imprecision terrified me. Only then did remember that a parent of one of my students worked for a thermal forming factory nearby. I thought, ‘How cool would it be if we could actually form our boat hulls in plastic?”. A few days later I got a tour of the factory and they were 100% on board. They gave me specifications for the molds we would have to make and I immediately started researching alternatives to the CAM machined aluminum molds they used for typical production. I ended up on youTube and found an entire cosplay culture that hand-fabricated amazing costume parts using very simple materials. This led me to discovering hot-wire cutting of foam. From there I discovered that very simple guides can be used to create relatively precise foam shapes with a hot-wire. With proper sealing of the foam shapes, I was confident that we could have a feasible mold for thermal forming.
Implementation
Groups & Division of Labor
Groups of four were selected by my teaching partner and I with input from the students. However, there were no roles within groups. Each group member was given a letter designation (A-D) and these designation were used to assign partnerships and distribute responsibilities on a regular basis. Students arrive to school on a given day and are given their instructions by designation. For example, on a given day A’s & D’s would be responsible for soldering while B’c & C’s are responsible for stage 1 rudder design. The next day A’s & B’s could be working on stage 2 rudder design while C’s are working on hull calculations and D’s are working on hull design sketches. This organizational process helped to ensure that responsibility was shared within the group. At any one time, each student had a specific task they were responsible for. This process also ensured that each member of the group had their hand in multiple parts of the project. A student may have worked on stage 3 hull sketches, stage 1 calculations, and stage 2 rudder design. By the end of this project, each individual knew their finished product inside and out.
The Process
At this point in the documentation process – two things happened. I wanted some student input and I got tired of writing. So, here is my guest student author Sharon Tamir (with my interspersed commentary).
“Going into this project, the class was unanimously anxious about two things: the difficulty of this project and the groups that we would have to work in. We all knew that this would be the next (and the last) big project of the year after Apocalypto, which had pushed us beyond anything we could have dreamed to accomplish so early in our high school career. Well, some of us anyway, which is why the class was worried about the group-picking process: along with wanting to be with our friends for the last project of the year, many people had a traumatizing experience with their Apocalypto team, and did not want to repeat history. During Apocalypto half the people were doing all the work while the other half contributed close to nothing, yet everyone was perceived as if they had put in the same amount of effort.”
An interesting reflection of Apocalypto when viewed alongside my reflections above.
“So this project began in a very hopeful way: each person got to pick one person they wanted to work with, and as a team we wrote down who we would like in our group and who we had difficulty coping with. The teams were announced, and almost every team had at least one person they felt they could depend on.”
These preferences were a big part of our group selection process but by no means the only consideration. In fact, we were amazed at the terrible partner selections some students made. We also took into account skill sets, previous group experiences, and personalities when setting up the groups.
“Almost immediately, there was discussion of the “how” and “what” this project was going to include. Mike and Scott included the entire team in almost all of the decision making. As a group we settled upon the final goal: the groups that are deemed the “pirates” would have to try and knock the cargo off of the group deemed the “merchants”, and the “merchants” would need to get a specified amount of cargo from point A to point B. As a group we also debated to what extent the pirates are allowed to arm themselves, what the maximum size of each team should be (“Merchants should be bigger! Pirates should be smaller!”) and if there should be a limit on the amount of upgrades a team should be allowed to receive (“Pirates should be able to have only a limited amount of upgrades because they are poorer!). There was talk of strategy, decorations, venues, and the layout of the events and competitions, and lots of debate on what sort of conduct should and should not be allowed.”
“This project officially launched in early April, by which we already had our teams. We did several activities that I was absent for, called “Watching Boats” and the “Foil Boat Challenge”. The “Watching Boats” activity got us used to the idea of a boat-based project, and the “Foil Boat Challenge” was to introduce us to buoyancy, density, volume, and everything in between. To solidify our understanding of buoyancy, each team split in two and created a presentation, reference sheet, and worksheet to present, hand out to the audience, and for the audience to complete. The next day, we were allowed to use our references to study before the buoyancy quiz.”
I don’t like direct instruction. It bores me, I don’t think I’m very good at it, and I avoid it at all costs. As such, most topics in my class start as a mini research project and presentation. These mini projects are extremely independent. Even if students don’t excel in this part – it gives them an initial exposure to the topic so any subsequent instruction or application is easier. This particular research project, students were required to present/teach the topic to an audience and to assess their understanding (hence the presentation, reference sheet, and worksheet).
“As soon as we had a solid understanding of buoyancy we switched gears into electronics. We received, annotated and took notes on a large packet introducing the units of measurement, the vocabulary, and most importantly the physics behind electrical parts and mechanisms. We were then allowed to use those notes to fill out a packet and complete some worksheets on these topics. At this point the STAR test was almost upon us, but that didn’t stop Scott from assigning a mini-project in which two people from each group worked together to create a “challenging” circuit, and then had to solve for someone else’s voltage and resistance. Had we had more time, it would have been valuable, I think, to spend more time solidifying our understanding of these topics.”
I agree. Some students learned a lot from the circuit challenge but with the ambient atmosphere of STAR testing, this benefit was definitely not universal.
“In the last week of April, we had a professional from Reichel Pugh, named Yanni, come in and give us a lecture introducing us to different boat properties and different types of hulls, along with their advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses. That evening, one of my group partners and I were so inspired by all the different options, we spent several hours doing some research of our own. Following this was our first binder check, for which we had to organize all of our handouts and deliverables in order by when the deadline was, and whether it was a group or individual assignment.”
In order to encourage good habits and simplify assessment, students kept all of their work organized in a group binder according to a published Table of Contents. For reference, you can check out the entire contents of Sharon’s group and individual binder contents.
“We started off May with a socratic seminar about what our “Design Spirals” will incorporate, “Design Spirals” being a tool that Yanni introduced us to that is used during the boat design and building process. Once we decided on those as a class, Scott transformed them into a series of packets that guided us through our design process.”
Design Spiral #1 was done individually.
“Now the STAR testing was upon us, but the show had to go on. During this time we learned that we had several options for how to construct the hull of the boat, the most popular being by plastic thermal molding. To create these molds, we used our updated design spiral packets to create Adobe Illustrator versions of the different views. Once those were cut out via the laser cutter, we placed foam in between the wooden pieces and used a hot wire to shape it according to what we desired. This created the shape of the hull if it were solid rather than hollow on the inside, making it so if hot plastic were to be dropped on it, the plastic would cool and harden into the shape of the hull we desired.”
Design Spiral #2 was split amongst the group.
“Along with updating our design, in this Spiral we updated the accuracy of our calculations as well. These calculations were, in essence, a series of smaller calculations with the final goal of arriving at a relatively accurate hull coefficient. These hull coefficients gave us information about the stability, speed, and agility of our ship. Each student had to solve for the volume of their ship, the maximum weight it could carry in grams and pounds, and one of the four hull coefficients (longitudinal prismatic, block, midship, and waterplane). The overall consensus was that the most difficult calculation to find was the volume of the hull. Each hull was such a complicated shape we had to be creative and use a combination of adding shapes, subtracting them, and applying new shapes we had to learn specifically for this purpose. “
“By the time we started the third and final Design Spiral, we had completed our mold for the plastic forming. Several days later, we took the molds to the plastic manufacturing company, Specialty Manufacturing Inc., and to our great surprise and delight every single mold worked! For this Spiral, the calculations for the hull coefficients and for the displacement, buoyancy and weight were all individual, and graded with great finesse and precision.”
“The next step was the most complex one: now that we had a hull, we had to install the electronics that made it go. We began with simple research, testing the water lines of our hulls and looking up and taking notes on the definitions of words such as servo, receiver, and controller, along with an introduction to the mathematics behind radio waves. On top of all this new learning, we were refining our individual calculation from Design Spiral #3, making them easier to understand and all around neater.”
“One person was in charge of the rudder and servo placement, another in charge of the bulkhead and through-hull in which the drive shaft, propellers and motors would spin, and the other two were in charge of the deck design and installation. It was completing these tasks that took the bulk of the time left until exhibition. The catch to this was that each person was in charge of a section of the boat, and was only graded on that section. So, if someone didn’t do their work, it would not affect your grade… but it would affect your boat. If you wanted your boat to work, you could do their work for them, but then they would get a good grade on work that you did. This encouraged the teams to support each other check on each other often, but it did not stop some from doing no work or others to take the slacker’s burden.”
This was an interesting experiment. Exceptional students often spend a great deal of time stressing about the ‘slacker’ students. Through this process I tried to completely free them of any grade responsibility for students that struggle more yet also tried to motivate them to help these students. One of the reasons for the strange division of labor in this project is that I tried to encourage groups to work in rotating pairs. It’s more manageable to share responsibility as a pair then it is to try and manage an entire group and students are more likely to support each other one on one .
“Basic building burdens aside, we had to learn how to use many new tools and utilize some new skills to be able to complete each individual’s section. Soldering, for example, was something almost the entire team had never done before, but had to do repeatedly with different electrical parts such as the electronic speed controls (ESC) and the connectors that connected the motor to the different types of batteries and servos. We learned how and when to use drills, saws, waterproofing techniques, wrenches, ratchets, screwdrivers and much, much more.”
“Those who worked hard and efficiently and got their work done early had the opportunity to test their boats repeatedly, making the tweaks necessary to improve the agility, speed, and stability of our boats. Most of the groups even had time to decorate their boat, giving each one that personal touch that made exhibition that much more fun!”
“Those who worked hard and efficiently and got their work done early had the opportunity to test their boats repeatedly, making the tweaks necessary to improve the agility, speed, and stability of our boats. Most of the groups even had time to decorate their boat, giving each one that personal touch that made exhibition that much more fun!”
“Like in Apocalypto, on exhibition day there were many who were still scrambling to put the final touches on their boats. Those who felt they still had a lot of work to do spent the bulk of the day at school with the various tools and equipment needed to complete their boats in the hours they had left. The rest of us went ahead to the model boat pond where we were going to show of our hard work. The initial setting up of the tables and displays of work didn’t take long at all, so we had hours upon hours of fun running around and hanging out. We killed time testing the boats and playing football with a shoe, talking by the water and eating pizza.”
“Then the inevitable hour arrived, and parents and friends began arriving at the model boat pond. Groups took turns manning their stations and going down by the water to check out the other boats. The competitions began, some a test of speed from one side of the pond to the other, others a test of agility where each boat had to go around buoys spread throughout a certain area. Some of the competitions were “merchant” versus “pirate”, where the “merchant” would be carrying as much cargo as they could and the “pirate” would do their best to force the cargo into the water.”
“The night ended with some grins from ear to ear, some frowns, boats no longer running and boats that had been beyond victorious.”
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Piracy Based Learning