STEM - Measurement Olympics

Juda has been part of the I^2 STEM summer institute at UW-Platteville the past 2 years; its goal is to have more STEM in schools which couples extremely well for my desire for large hands-on projects.  So I wanted to post about the Measurement Olympics I ran in my Intro to Engineering Class this semester and encourage other teachers to use it (motivation came from the institute and our school's Olympic theme this year).

Instead of homework I am trying to issue challenges this year.  I am pushing students to be persistent and solve difficult problems - really trying to focus on Habits of Mind.

I created a short youtube video about the events (so that my judges could know see first hand what the students were doing  - also here is a link to the materials)

It went great.  The students were divided into teams and estimate, calculated and worked hard on solving these problems - it ended with them presenting their results to panel of judges.  It went well and taught a lot of the real world skills we want in students.  Plus first prize was cool (see facebook post).....