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• A Science Fair Project
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  As I read thru your column I was amazed at the number of those items I hacked in my youth. Having access to these and parents willing to let me take things apart and experiment was certainly a major influence in choosing engineering as a career.
  
  A number of years ago my oldest daughter decided at the last minute she wanted to be in the 4th Grade Science Fair. Scrambling to come up with an idea we turned to the collection of toys in the basement. When she was younger a made a simple set of wooden blocks with 1" thick maple,2 inches wide and multiples of 2 in length up to 8 inches. We used the blocks to conduct a block stacking experiment. Like sized blocks were drawn at random to see how high we could stack each size before the column collapsed. We conducted multiple runs of each size and came up with some nice bar charts to display the results. We also used the blocks for a hands on display at the science fair.

  Posted by djpolats on December 10, 2011 at 09:52:09 Pacific Time

• Project Based Learning
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  I am a teacher at Waxahachie Global High and we are working to focus on project based learning for our STEM students. You are correct, our schools need more of what you are describing. Students need to get their hands and minds involved in their projects and learning.

  Posted by Fontan75 on November 08, 2011 at 13:47:41 Pacific Time

• Project Based Learning
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  Thanks for writing! I'd love to hear more about your experiences teaching and what kinds of projects you're tackling with your students. Please feel free to email the editors at editor@makezine.com.
  
  Laura Cochrane
  Assistant Editor

  Posted by Laura Cochrane on November 08, 2011 at 14:16:41 Pacific Time