STEAM -- Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math -- provides students with well-rounded, in depth experiences of science concepts and practices. Over the last several weeks, the fifth grade's Journey to Mars unit allowed to students to envision themselves as astronauts preparing for a future mission to Mars. Students researched differences between Earth and Mars and developed a list of problems humans would have to over come to live on Mars. Then, they each designed a potential solution to one of these problems --a new technology-- and built a prototype, all while learning about and practicing parts of the engineering design process.
Students also got hands-on engineering design experience as they built and tested a "lander" to keep an egg intact when dropped to the floor from the balcony in the gym. The class discussed the speed an object would fall due to gravity, the impact of air resistance on falling speed, and how different designs would change the air resistance and speed. Students considered how this problem is similar to the problem scientists and engineers face in trying to land humans safely on Mars.
The class studied videos and articles to learn about some of the most recent discoveries scientists have made regarding Mars' past and current climate, atmosphere, and geology. To display their knowledge, each student created a poster showing and explaining how Mars has changed and what they envision Mars could be like in the future. The students' artwork on these posters demonstrates their thoughtfulness and depth of knowledge concerning Mars history and their creativity in imagining possible futures, including human settlement.
Using an app called Aurasma, we "embedded" a short video of each student presenting his or her Mars engineering design project onto their illustration of Mars in the future on the student's poster. You can view your student's video by downloading the Aurasma app, setting up an account, and following me at sperrysia. Then just open the app and hold your device over the illustration on the poster. The video should start to play! You can use the app to create your own embedded Aurasma videos, too.
