RE Log Spring 2018

SPRING 2018 Ransom Everglades LOG 33 T he words REdesign, REbuild, REprogram appear on the back of the shirts worn by our Middle School competitive robotics students. They are intended as a reminder that the work we do is always challenging and fun- damentally iterative in nature. Ideating, or brainstorming, is just one of the steps of the engineering design process that stu- dents learn when engaged in competitive robotics at Ransom Everglades. Students work in teams to develop a strategy, design, build a prototype, program it, then test it and analyze the results. Failure (and no small amount of frustration) is part of the process, but the students take what they learn and start the cycle over again with new insights. Ahead of its time, the Everglades School for Girls explained the philosophy in its creed: “To profit from your past mistakes and aim for higher goals.” I am proud to say that engineering, design-thinking and invention are becom- ing more and more a part of the everyday life of Middle School students. In the past few years, competitive robotics has grown from a handful of students working dur- ing the club portion of the school day to more than 30 working after school four days a week. We sent five teams to this year’s RoboSLAM and two to the state championship, and we hope to repeat last year’s success at worlds! The integra- tion of science, technology and applied mathematics is evident within the school day as well. The seventh-grade rotation now includes computer programming and app-making, and the eighth graders are taking a semester-long course with a focus on robotics programming using Robot-C. Sixth-grade students will be participating in the second-annual Ransom Everglades Energy and Climate Symposium where their individual scientific experiments, research reports and engineering projects will be showcased. Our budding scientists continue their exploration of science dur- ing club time; we have a Crime-Busters club as well as Organic Garden, Pinhole Camera and Slime-Time clubs. The STEM Club has taken on the challenge of putting together a hydroponic garden inspired in part by the aquaponics system (see page 36) on the Ransom Campus. From the Everglades Campus STEM at RE rooted in the Dell The science department has been continu- ally updating the curriculum at all grade levels, reinforcing math skills and infusing connections to the humanities and arts as well engineering and design-thinking. This integrated approach, which builds on the many excellent projects and labs our students have been doing for years, rep- resents a natural contemporary iteration of the experiential approach to learning Paul Ransom built the school around. When our students begin their years at the Ransom Campus and take their first class- es in our upcoming STEM Center, they will already know that designing a part for 3D printing requires a sense of form and function. As they look across the Quad at the Visual Arts Building they will know they can find inspiration for their creations in aesthetics as well as mathematics. In the future, they may choose to pursue medicine, alternative energy, Battlebots or graphic design but, rest assured, they are already testing their initial designs on the Bluff or in the Dell, or in the Atrium. Gustavo Palacios Middle School Science Department Coordinator