Posts Tagged ‘applied academics’

Colfax MIT Inventeam videos document process

Thursday, August 1st, 2013

Colfax High School students, with a support of MIT, invented the Tri-Metric.

Colfax EurekaFest 015 (1)It is a tool that offers a brand new way to layout a house. The mechanical device sits in the middle of the building envelope and uses similar shapes to make sure the floor, walls and roof are all square to maximize support. This tool can be used by any home builder, but is especially designed for emergency relief housing constructed by Mercy Corps. It can be manufactured for under $20 and because all the complex math of trigonometry is built into this inventive tool, it can be used by the novice, expert or anyone in between.

Watch the amazing progress of these high school STEM students applying academics and using critical thinking throughout the design process. Twenty-three movies are available on the ColfaxMath channel under Colfax Inventeams Tri-Metric.

For example, watch the evolution from prototype to products on Twenty Little Bets to make the Tri-Metric. See how to Learn Trig the easy way with the Tri-Metric. Find out how to use the Tri Metric, Construction Layout Tool.


STEM Faculty Integrate Math Lessons into Welding

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012

Through a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant,  Sierra College Math and Welding  faculty participated in the University of West Virginia at Parkersburg (UWVP) IGNITE project to develop math lessons applied to a welding project. The results showed that students’ math skills improved significantly.

Watch the movie about this NSF project integrating math into a welding technical education class at Placer Herald Sierra College addresses skills gap by fusing math with welding (11-29-2012).

Sierra College Welding Department chair, Bill Wenzel and Katie Lucero, chair of the Sierra College Math Department, developed the new applied academic curriculum. Carol Pepper-Kittredge, director, Sierra College Center for Applied Competitive Technologies (CACT), facilitated the collaboration of faculty with the University of West Virginia on this NSF grant project.

See the photo gallery of Sierra College welding students learning applied math as part of the NSF grant at the Placer Herald Sierra College fuses math and welding

 


Colax Record: Students get taste of engineering in tech class

Friday, January 13th, 2012

On January 5, the Colfax Record reported “With the help and guidance of Sierra College staff, Colfax High teachers Christian Kinsey and Wade Wolff recreated the Tech Essentials class, which incorporates Fraction Contraption, created by Jonathon Schwartz. Fraction Contraption seeks to spark students’ interest in math with games and by making connections with math use. … Students had to fabricate a battery-operated car built on a chassis with a motherboard while using tools and programs on the Internet to design and draft the body.”

Read more at http://colfaxrecord.com/detail/196957.html