September 14: Balloon vehicles

Most of the 9th grade class was on a trip to Thompson Island. The remaining students (~26 in number) were combined for this activity. I worked with another intern to organize an activity where students were given some materials and tasked to build a balloon powered vehicle that travelled as far as possible down a length of string. Planning went smoothly but I was concerned about time constraints and some specifics about the introductory discussion. The final plans are “balloon mobiles.doc” and “balloon vehicles.doc” (expanded to include more details re: timing, materials, instructor roles).

Overall the activity went well. I felt the introductory talk could have been a little more focused and clear about the task. Also, the original string tracks were not long enough (just over 4 m), and one or two groups got to the end on the first or second try. We had to make ad hoc secondary goals for these groups, which amounted to adding frivolous and ill defined constraints (“You have to build a platform for the vehicle”). Eventually a longer track was built so that the groups could keep to the original goal. A few groups got frustrated with repeated failures. One group nearly did not finish building at all, and finally made one test run as others were finishing cleanup. In the future more attention should probably be paid to these groups to push them in the right direction. Encourage groups to try often. It's better to try and fail many times than to fail just once at the end (when there's no time left to revise).

I led the final discussion with the class about what problems they ran into, what worked or failed, etc. The discussion was okay but most students were reluctant to participate. Ideally more time would be allotted to allow them to warm up to talking. Also, although I had in mind what I wanted to discuss, more time should have been spent beforehand working out the order of topics. As it was, I think I perhaps jumped around a little too much and relied too heavily on improvising a discussion, which might have hindered feedback from the students. Some good points were made in discussion and a few groups had very good designs, but it is difficult to assess how much the students got out of the assignment.