On June 1, 2010, Office of the Director, Defense Research and Engineering, and released the "Systems 2020 - Strategic Initiative Overview Briefing" which describes the need for new engineering tools and approaches to develop defense related systems. A key challenge will be the speed at which new systems will need to be developed. To respond this and other challenges, the briefing cites four big ideas, the first of which is Model Based Engineering (MBD) shown in the slide below:
It takes time to learn to work with sophisticated tools such as simulation software, and traditional teaching methods are not sufficient. What are we doing to help high school students develop the skills required to work with modeling and simulation software?
"Physics to the Rescue" now has a new game called Charge. From the Game page on SimInsights website:
"Tommy can survive only if he stays on the board and does not fall into the icy cold water. He needs you to balance the board by manipulating the magnitude and position of the electrical charge at the bottom right."
Following is a video showing a few seconds of gameplay.
Like other games in "Physics to the Rescue", Charge is designed to engage students with concepts of electrostatic attraction before a lecture covering Coulomb's law. Teachers may assign the game as homework to be completed before the lecture. Students come to the SimInsights site and play the game. At the end of the lecture, teachers would typically debrief the game, allowing students to share their experiences, aha moments, frustrations etc. Finally, teachers connect the game play experience with other instances of electrostatic attraction.
Ken Kay, past President of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, has been elected to the board of Buck Institute for Education. Ken has a very interesting blog post about 21st century education and Project Based Learning. He summarizes his perspectives succinctly as follows:
"21st century education and the 4Cs [critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity] are the most powerful ways to move a dialogue forward to create a consensus vision around the future of education in your school or district.
PBL is one of the most effective strategies we have today that can actually help us teach and assess the 4Cs in today’s classrooms."
At SimInsights, we are developing collaborative simulation software that support exciting real world projects. See a simulation-based bridge design project done at Pomona College, for example. Though this project took several weeks of work by a five high school seniors who met for four hours a week, not all projects need to be this long. In contrast, Mike Amarillas at Fremont High School in Sunnyvale, CA has had his students complete an open-ended collaborative assignment on collisions within just one hour.
We have been a long admirers of work done by Buck Institute and support its efforts to bring about meaningful change to education worldwide and are thankful to Buck Institute for helping spread the word about us.
