Frisch's Engineering Poster Presentation at #ISTE2016

One of my highlights of the ISTE conference which I attended last month was a poster session on Teaching an Integrated STEM Class given by my colleague at The Frisch School and Chair of our Engineering and Computer Science department, Mrs. Rifkie Silverman.

Let me explain.

For the past five plus years, I have been enamored by our engineering program. What began with 18 select students and a curriculum developed by The Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education, has grown into a two year track for students of all levels of ability combining mechanical, electrical, and biomedical engineering, Arduino micro-processors, coding, and 3d printing in a project-based learning environment where every student is held accountable and given all the tools to excel. Whenever I need a lift during a busy school day, I just hang out in the lab for a few minutes to be amazed by our students busy at work in small groups with Rifkie, rarely from the front of the room, offering her expert knowledge and as needed assistance. I have blogged about this program numerous times, for example, here, and here, and here, and I have the privilege to work closely with the students especially in the area of 3d design.

Mrs. Rifkie Silverman, myself, and Dr. Ethan Zadoff at the Frisch Engineering Poster session.

Watching our program featured as an exemplar not only for Jewish schools but to the 16,000 plus attendees at ISTE representing thousands of schools was exhilarating. Our table included many examples of student products including the G.R.A.B., a prosthetic arm controlled by movements of specially outfitted eyeglasses, the Super Spoon, a specially designed utensil which helps steady the grip of a user with a tremor, and the Shabbat safe sliding door, designed by two of our seniors in close consultation with the Zomet Institute as a part of a course integrating halacha and engineering. Participants also watched a video window into our labs with dozens of our students describing their projects. You can view the video below.



But even more impressive than the student produced engineering projects was the process. The greatest challenge in Project Based Learning is accountability. How does one ensure that every student is working and learning every single day? This becomes even more apparent when one is conducting not just a two week project-based unit of study but a capstone project over the course of an entire semester. At the poster session, Rifkie demonstrated a Google doc containing various rubrics, self-check quizzes, and other educational strategies utilized to keep students focused and on task. This Google doc also linked to shared Google docs that every group created as a digital journal of their work.

In the past, students created written journals which they were required to update regularly throughout the weeks spent on their final project. This year, the physical journals were migrated to the digital Google docs format. This allowed students to collaborate as the three students in each group could all easily update their journal with the revision history indicating exactly who made which contributions. These digital portfolios were also shared with Mrs. Silverman so she could have a handle at any moment on what students were up to without having to collect anything from them.

At the end of the process, each group was required to create a publicly accessible Google doc as a cover page linking to their digital journal and to a video demonstration of their project. Knowing that their work was being shared not only with their teacher but with a world-wide public audience through their digital journal further enhanced the professionalism and attention to detail of the students.

At ISTE, teachers from as far away as Mexico, Australia, and dozens of states came to hear about the Frisch engineering program during the poster session. It was a real Kiddush Hashem as our students were able to serve as an Or Lagoyim, a Light to the Nations, by showing a model of rigorous project-based engineering created with a focus on Tikkun Olam, perfecting the world. You can read a newspaper account of the session here and pictures from the poster presentation and other moments of the Frisch ISTE delegation are embedded below.