Prototyping For Rapunzel

We are embarking again on a mission to work with fairy tales to solve engineering problems, but this year we are using the fairy tale anthology Power To The Princess, which retells traditional fairy tales with more of a "girl power" twist. In this telling of the story, Rapunzel is not stolen away and hidden in a tower awaiting her prince who will rescue her. She lives in the tower willingly as she apprentices with Mother Gothel, and tries to determine what her power is. Turns out, she has an amazing power to engineer and as an architect!

Students had to design a way for Rapunzel to enter and exit the tower safely, along with her visually-impaired friend, Prince Eustace, with whom she has a great business partnership, building structures that are beautiful but also handicap accessible.

See Mrs. Newton's video of the kindergarten working diligently here!

Here are some photos of the students prototyping their designs:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week, students tested their designs and gave each other kind, specific, helpful feedback on what they liked and what worked in their design. They only lifted each other up, without being critical. What a thoughtful group of kids, and they were so successful!

 

 

 

 

So proud of these engineers! We'll be working on more fairy tale problems after break, and discussing where we see these types of technology in the real world!

Technology & Equity Presentations

Third through fifth grade has moved on from making Dash write and is now looking at the bigger picture of how technology helps people and animals live more equitable lives. Students watched this amazing video about how the engineers at Xbox listened to feedback from the accessibility community regarding how to make their traditional controller more user-friendly to everyone. The reaction from almost every class was, "Wow!"

Then students perused a Padlet of resources that holds dozens of links to videos and articles about how technology helps others around the world. They had to choose one and with a partner, then figure out what problems were being solved and how the engineers made it happen. Kindergarten through second grade saw these videos as well, but without the written aspect. We discussed them as a whole class.

In the end, each pair came up and taught the class about their research. Not only did we learn about some really inspiring technology, students started to consider that a career in technology might have impact on our world and the people and animals in it. Significant Global Goals connections!

Students will begin solving a problem using technology after the winter break that they will design! They can't wait!