Subject:  Electric Car Teams - Fall '97 !
Date:  07 Aug 1997 12:05:53 -0500

RACE DAY/ECAR TEAM REFLECTIONS of Rick Cash/
(Recently we shared Lee Hart's reflections based on his work with Morris 
Park Elementary via Email)

"Reflections on the 1996-1997, 1st Annual E-Car Program

It has been awhile since our E-car race, and I think it is time to provide
some thoughts / perspective before I forget completely::::

Of course like most items of this nature, it is without structure until 
structure is provided.....
I was  tenative in this, as our core was to tap the imaginations of the 
children, and leave them with some victory experiences of using their own 
skills to accomplish an objective......

The E- Car provides a long term goal which cannot be viewed as "make-work"; 
it is not just some extra-credit program that must be turned in on time. 
Recall that one of our stated objectives in the "Post-Sci-Math"
[Sci/Math of MN Teacher Acadamy Teacher visits to HBC/GV 3 summers
running...] experience has been to involve girls earlier in the education
sequence so they will retain interest in science and math - oriented career
options.

I can only comment reliably on the efforts with Elaine's [Sonnyson 5th grade 
elementary, Robbinsdale] class.  There were a significant number of girls 
who were very active in their participation!  In fact , they were the 
driving forces in the project.  But first, a little history...

We began the year with some brainstorming on inventions.  We got alot of 
great ideas from the class, and I believe this helped to establish a rapport 
of fun to continue the engineer-class lnk successfully .

When I announced the E-car event in February, the class had alot of 
enthusiasm, and wanted to immediately name the car and decide what color to 
paint it.  Being of a mind that they needed to make progress on the car 
itself before worring about what color it was to be, I deferred them to wait 
until the car actually rolled.

In retrospect, maybe having them name it and decide its
color would help them visualize the final product better, and would have 
been a helpful; motivating tool.

We then went over the different teams for the project:  Chassis, body, and 
control design, Manufacturing, test, marketing, and supply.  Everyone picked 
a 1st and 2nd choice.  We partitioned them into groups and said "Go".

Much arguing began on who did what, and it was apparent the team approach 
was floundering.

It became apparent that a better plan was to have meetings after class , and 
let whoever wanted to stay, stay.  The team concept did remain a little bit, 
however, as we had people who worked on the marketing and supply side 
effectivey.

One of the problems with the team approach was how to make decisions, both 
within and outside the team.  Loudness was tried, but I encouraged them to 
abandon this technique.

The idea here was to make the class as independent as possible, so that the
work would be all done by the students without following the ideas of adults 
at all.

Things progressed pretty slowly.  The sense of schedule was not one well 
perceived by the group.  It would be useful to impart a better sense of this
to them somehow early on in the project.

Nonetheless, as the deadline approached some leaders emerged, and began to
get committed to the car. A few stayed every night I was available to help!
There was alot of time spent learning how to use simple tools such as
screwdrivers, hammers, drills, saws, etc.

There was not as much emphasis on the math to determine objectives as I had 
hoped, and I believe the goal should be to finish the car a minimum of 1 
month before the race, so that the car can ' drive" their interest in 
learning about speed, acceleration, fuel consumption tradeoffs, etc. that 
could demonstrateuse of math.

The electrical part could be focussed on more as well, allowing more
discussion of what is current and where does it go! The water analogy was
accepted pretty easily by our group... as in all good team efforts, after the
"storming" of team formation came the "performing" segment where everyone
helped out without much internal conflict.

The day of the race saw about half the class in attendance!  The parents 
were quite often caught up in the excitement of the event, and I guess a 
race is loved by all, even if your car breaks down 9 as ours did early and 
often , owing to its miracle completion the night before without any 
testing).  The class nontheless took alot of pride in their accomplishment, 
and hopefully also learned something about trying to eat a pie before it is 
fully baked, so to speak.

In retrospect, I think the class needed more "finger food" of car parts to
play around with earlier, and needed a little more space than the 8' X 8' 
area alloted to car stuff in the classroom so some more "what if" trials 
could go on.  Alot of time was spent in dragging out and putting back parts. 


The idea of modelling their designs at slot-car scale early in the year ( as
real working models, possibly electric-motor solar powered cars) would help
define the full-scale device earlier and give the class a tangible feeling
for this end product as well. also, some of the math and science concepts
could be discussed earlier, so that the math ideas could be explored on the
model cars, and results us4ed as a basis for the full scale car. This would
have the added benefit of using the math and science tools at a different
time than the physical tools of large-scale car construction, so more focuss
could be placed on both.

In closing these ramblings, I believe the result of the 1st e-car race to be
an unqualified success.  Many of the students have expressed an interest in 
returning for another go at their car next year, even though they will be at 
different schools!  Also, I am sure that each and every student participated 
at least one or two nights in our feverish drive to the due date.  We even 
had students wandering in from other classes and grades helping out.  Some 
students even remarked they were sad to see the school year end ( honest!). 
Everyone involved was a winner.

Thanks to all of the adults that helped make this project and event possible.
One parent remarked to me that her daughter was now interested in engineering
where before she had not--she had wanted to be a doctor, (so is this a good
tradeoff?)


Rick Cash