End of First Week Thoughts

I typically get to BU around 7 AM to beat the traffic.  I sit in the first floor student workroom.  This morning Jared joined me and we had a great conversation about implementing an engineering curriculum into middle school.  We both only have a short period of time to impart all the technology/engineering information required by the Mass DESE so our students do well on the 8th grade science, technology, and engineering MCAS test.  I had mentioned to Jared that I had to develop my own curriculum and would bring it in next week so he might be able to be find an activity that would fit into his curriculum.

On Friday we started by having a great presentation on "smart lighting" by Dr. Borogovac.  Some of the technology that they want to incorporate into a "typical" light bulb is very impressive.  I hope the time frames that were mentioned during the presentation are valid because I want to go to Best Buy and purchase one of these devices and try it out in my home.

Dr. Borogovac also spoke about a summer program they offer to high school seniors to get them interested in electrical engineering.  We were allowed to play around with some of the equipment the high school seniors used during their two week program.  At the end Dr. Borogovac demonstrated the use of a photophone that allowed messages to be wirelessly passed from one computer to another via the use of light pulses from an LED light.  I'm sure my middle school students would enjoy this activity.

For most of the rest of the afternoon Marvin and prepared to make our presentation to Dr. Reinhard's group.  We polished our PowerPoint presentation and divided the presentation responsibilities.  Right at four o'clock all of the member of Dr. Reinhard's group came into the conference room.  We finally were able to introduce ourselves to the entire group.

In addition to make the presentation about who we are and the summer RET program, we also provided our understanding of the four technical articles that we had been provided the first day we were in the lab.  Also, we outlined the next steps in the process and stressed the need for Marvin and I to find the connections between the research and our classroom activities.  We provided everyone with a copy of our schedule during the next five weeks so they can start to plan where Marvin and I can fit into their existing research schedule.  In general I think the presentation went well.  We have already set up another meeting with Dr. Reinhard and other members of the group to collect information about the project.