Videos introduce
UW-Madison engineering experts to youth worldwide
f
you’re in it to win it, you’re in it for the wrong reasons,”
says Marc Couture, about the FIRST (For Inspiration
and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO League, an international
team-based robotics competition that annually attracts nearly 90,000
kids ages 9 to 14.“This is about the process,” he says.
“This is about what this group of kids has learned about how to
work together—and those are the skills that are important in participating
in the program."
Founded in 1989 by inventor/entrepreneur
Dean Kamen, FIRST designs a series of accessible, innovative programs
that build not only science and technology skills and interests, but
also self confidence, leadership and life skills.
Trained as a mechanical engineer,
Couture discovered FIRST programs when his son was 10. Now he volunteers
full-time with FIRST as its Wisconsin coordinator. “I’m
always looking for ways to enhance how the program is delivered,”
he says.
His desire to improve the
quality and content of competition-associated information led him in
2006 to Associate Professor Wendy
Crone, then outreach and education director of the UW-Madison NSF
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center.
In response, Crone and her staff and students produced a series of educational
videos about nanotechnology for the 2006 FIRST LEGO League (FLL) “Nano
Quest” competition. Posted to the project resources section of
the FLL website, the videos were available as research material to competition
participants in more than 30 countries.
Each year, FLL teams take
on a new challenge. Based on a theme (past themes have included Ocean
Odyssey, Mission Mars, Arctic Impact, and Volcanic Panic, among others),
the students research, design and build a robot that autonomously executes
several “missions.” During the competitions—which
begin about two-and-a-half months after the challenge debuts—judges
also score FLL participants on a 10-minute technical interview, a 10-minute
teamwork assessment interview, and on a challenge-related project they
planned and implemented within their community.
The 2007 challenge is called
Power Puzzle. It encourages FLL participants to consider their energy
choices, analyze the effect of those choices, and learn about their
consequences.
Associate Scientist and UW
Energy Institute Director Paul
Meier led a group of faculty, staff and students who helped
to produce educational videos for the 2007 challenge. “We set
out to create something that introduced the subject matter for the competition,
but that we also could use indefinitely as an educational tool,”
he says.
Because energy is such a broad field, Meier and his colleagues produced
the videos as an introduction to sustainable energy. “We wanted
to demonstrate that we use energy in our everyday lives all the time,
and that sustainability depends on how fast a resource is used relative
to how fast it’s replenished,” he says. “Other lessons
we conveyed are that energy can be converted from one form to another,
but that not all forms of energy are equally convenient for doing the
kinds of work that we need. And finally, because we use so much energy,
decisions about our energy future must consider tradeoff side effects
and unintended consequences.”
Meier,
Geology Professor Alan Carroll, Mechanical Engineering
Associate Professor Greg Nellis, EP Professor Mike
Corradini and Assistant Professor Paul
Wilson, and Wisconsin Public Utility Institute Director Cara Lee
Mahany Braithwait wrote the video script. However, they chose not to
“star” in the actual videos, which UW-Madison hosts and
streams via its high-bandwidth network. “Because of the age group,
we wanted the middle school audience to see college students discussing
this,” says Meier. “So, we had six student volunteers from
engineering, geology and the energy analysis and policy program who
worked with the script and then presented the material. We wanted role
models for the young students to say, ‘In just a few years, you
could be working in this area.’”
A graduate student in nuclear
engineering and energy analysis and policy, Megan Sharrow is among the
students featured in the videos. “It was amazing to watch it get
orchestrated,” she says. “It was one of those projects that,
when you work on it, it’s fun. Everyone says, ‘Yes, this
is a lot of work. But yes, this is going to be so great when it’s
done.’”
On campus, the Engineering
Media Services office produced the videos, with support from journalism
doctoral student Wendy Swanberg and mechanical engineering undergraduate
Matson Contardo.
Couture, who also worked with Engineering
Media Services producer Nancy Ciezki on several short mission videos,
also is happy with the result. “What I really appreciate from
Nancy’s involvement and Paul’s involvement, is that by proximity,
it’s made it easier to deliver some top-quality content,”
he says. “They better understand from year to year what we’re
trying to do.”
By the time the Power Puzzle season concludes, more than 100,000 people
will watch the UW-Madison energy videos. And Couture already is working
with a new group of UW-Madison researchers on videos for the yet-undisclosed
2008 challenge. “As I build relationships here, I almost don’t
care what subject matter gets thrown at me in the future,” he
says. “I’m highly confident that I’ll find somebody
in the UW System who is knowledgeable in that area.”
To view the project video files, please visit: webstreamer3.doit.wisc.edu/lego/.
