Cheap Outcomes

I have a value I try to work to for the projects I develop for schools, especially Primary schools, of £1. Almost anyone can buy a kit costing £6 a child and produce a 'fun' activity, but to be sustainable, the building has to be part of a scheme / project and also cheap enough that it can be repeated each year and the results sold to the pupils (Allowed if the pupils take resources home).
This wind turbine as shown costs about 50p in bits, though I have used a rather expensive laser cutter to make the hub. If you use hand cut card circles for the hub, you have an extremely effective turbine which can be pushed through a cardboard box (Add beads to the shaft to act as a bearing or spacer) and you can add a pulley to make other mechanisms turn / move. They really work well. Put in the wind or in front of a fan, they spin extremely fast which is magic to a young child.

There is part of my work that is about new, shiny,cutting edge ideas. Things like this primary turbine remind me that to every class, every year, these are new projects they have never had the chance to try before. By keeping the cost down, everyone gets to make one and proudly take them home.

Chip Tray Hovercraft

This is an idea I developed for a client for Yr8 Engineering lessons. Having tried the chip tray hovercraft layout in TEP (http://www.tep.org.uk/) I had problems getting it to work as advertised. Found out I had the wrong power supercapacitor. Even though the one i had was labelled 2.5v and 10F (From the official supercap kit from http://www.mutr.co.uk/) , it was a third the size of another from http://www.rapidonline.com/ which was labelled the same. Turns out the bigger one had three times the capacity (time able to run things). It was also the same price as the smaller one and worked with 15p motors from Rapid. Once I swapped for the bigger capacitor, everything became easy. This version uses sticky pads and connector blocks and can be assembled in about half an hour. The information on making it that the pupils received didn't quite work. On purpose, the design made the hovercraft a little rear heavy and they had to resite / cut the card cowl to get it working effectively. Look at my earlier posts to find out about the magnetic connectors.

This model was, of course, done in Sketchup. It tested my ingenuity to draw a decent chip tray in Sketchup (Try It!) but once everything was in 3D, it was relatively easy to arrange the parts for powerpoint slides, exploded views etc. I have taken the same approach to recent work for other clients. A wind turbine I have developed for KS3 is a 3D model which allows me to very quickly generate pictorial worksheets.

The backgrounds are black because the files are actually .gif files with transparent backgrounds. Saved and placed over other graphics in PowerPoint, they work beautifully but Blogger does not support this feature.

Effective vehicle platform

Schools are often seeking a simple way of building cars and other wheeled vehicles without the complications of sorting axles and pulleys which can prove tricky for very small hands. Pupils, especially in primary school, want to build things that actually climb over sticks, go up 'hills' and 'work'.

This example uses a common module availble from www.rapidonline.com (Code 37-0310), and www.mutr.co.uk (Code TG1 010), for about £1.35. Partner with a simple battery box with built in switch (Sold by both rapid and mutr) and a couple of wheels and you have an inexpensive 'platform' for creating a strong capable vehicle.

And if you are worrying about costs, you can normally re-use all parts with care, or charge the pupils as if they're idea is good, and they are proud of it, virtually all pupils will bring in some money towards the cost!

Suspension Bridge

Here is an idea I am developing.

The bridge is made out of standard sizes / cuts of plywood and MDF. The finished packed bridge fits on the back seat 0f a standard car and should be liftable by two people.

Weights are foldable water containers.

With 100 litres (100KG) of water in each box, these act as the foundations the bridge is built off.

Participants work in teams of up to 10, competing against another team building another bridge, to build a working suspension bridge. Bridges are between 10 and 14 metres long...

Only consumable is the water, and a big ball of string!

This model wass built in Sketchup in 1 hour from scratch!

To test they must drive a glass of water over it on the back of a radio controlled car. Speed to cross and water left equals score usign a formula.

Should be building a prototype before the end of July 2007, and rolling it out to schools in East Nottingham City next academic year!

Edutainment?

Well meaning friends bought me a quiz programme for my Birthday recently. It proudly boasted 400 questions and after doing a standard test on it I came to the following conclusions

1. I am not good at intelligence tests
2. I could learn to be better at them
3. This program was not going to help me get better

After completing 40 questions, the program baldly told me what I'd got wrong but not why or how it should have been answered. Bad Consultancy is like that... you can tell people what's wrong, but not how to make it better. What I did learn, is that the disc flies really,really well.

Communication Strategies

I am writing this from home with a temperature and a sore throat which means Voice recognition software and recording voice-overs for e-learning films are very out!

This is a bit disconcerting because on Saturday i am running a whole day training event in Sketchup for 25 people and I have not been able to record the e-learning films for any of it yet as the clock ticks closer.

What this delay has done is force me to consider alternative strategies and consider if they are really 'second-best'. i have access to extremely sophisticated screen recording software but it is time consuming compared to clicking and speaking. Maybe what i will do in the end is reduce the amount of talking, even getting others to say prepared statements out loud which I will line up with the film in Windows movie maker. The result will probably be better precisely because it will be 'considered' instruction rather than a continuous stream of dialogue.

Also of course, the most melodious voice may eventually pale after a couple of hours of solid instruction. As they say... Out of adversity comes invention!

Micro Radio Controlled Airships

I bought a £5 radio control car at Christmas and have an idea to use the core mechanism to make a miniature radio control airship. I have run two radio control airship clubs in the past as Pupil/Parent activities, but they are restricted by the weight of the radio control equipment. Typically they used standard 2 channel radio gear and needed to use about 2 cubic metres to be effective. Go here for a film of them.

Using commercially available balloon gas which is 95% Helium, you get a lift of about 1kg per cubic metre. This is the TOTAL lift though so the weight of the envelope (Bit that contains the gas) and the radio gear and batteries and everything else must be lifted. The new generation of micro-cars weigh a few grams and it should be possible to build a simple airship with them. These pictures show some outline details. using the core module from the car. i expect the final airship to be around 1 metre long. If anyone is interested in more detail or wishes to sponsor a pilot, and receive full building details and a scheme of work then please contact me.

Super Capacitors and Polarisation

Supercaps are small battery like components. You connect them to power, they soak up some and then you can connect them to other devices. They don't store lots of power, but enough to run a simple motor for a couple of minutes maybe.

I am presently writing 4 units of work for The University Of The First Age based in Birmingham but actually countrywide in their influence. I needed a way to simply join super capacitors to motors etc. and have come up with this idea using the 'magnetic connectors' sold by www.mutr.co.uk and combining them with the standard 10 Amp electrical connecor blocks

It means you cannot (If wired correctly) connect the wires the wrong way round (Their Polarity) which means less chance of damaging these useful but expensive (£4 each) components!

Growing Ideas

Plant a seed, take care, watch and see it grow!

Today I read an article by a senior educationalist saying Pilot projects sshow that if you have an idea, run by interested people, with good financial backing... they make a positive difference to a child's education.

Pretty obvious, the trick is to spread that difference beyond the carefully nurtured 'pilot' ground.

I am organising a wind turbine pilot at the moment and one key outcome is reproducibility. I have worked with teachers to secure funding for one pilot, a fact finding series of trips for pupils, teacher development and training for the pilot, and finally two teacher training events at which we will give participants at least 2 cd's of material and multiple kits to take away and use in their own classrooms. In this way the project should grow beyond its initial pilot stage.

I have in front of me a £1500 cd/dvd automated disc copying machine and printer. With this, organisations hosting events can give teachers multiple copies of info to give to others. I thought at first that hosting the stuff online was the answer but writing and hosting huge media websites is far more time consuming and ultimately costly than knocking out a few CD's at less than £1 each. Some materials will go on youtube but most will be on the CD.

A pilot is like growing seeds in a greenhouse under ideal consitions... It will almost always work! The next stage is to find out how to grow those seeds in real soil and still get a good crop. All my future bids to funders will include teacher training events from now on.. to get them out of the greenhouse!