21st Century Topics and Tools - Week 6 Course V

The content area I chose for this week’s assignment is simple machines. Looking for 21^st century tools that would assist my students in learning about this topic; I decided to approach the assignment, as “how would I teach the students the concept using only web or technology tools?” To introduce the topic of simple machines the video on Rube Goldberg machines http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w will awaken their interest and motivation. Then the explanations at http://aspire.cosmic-ray.org/labs/machine/act1a/index.html to support their basic understanding of simple machines. Next students see a historical perspective and perform various activities in the Inventor’s Workshop http://www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/InventorsWorkshop.html. Going through the activities in the Inventor’s Workshop will generate questions they may want to answer and they develop and understanding of how others in the past solved everyday problems.   Once they have looked at these activities and experiences they need hands on classroom activity where they test some basic simple machines collecting and comparing data to see if the machines actually help reduce the work. The last station of this is the computer with the http://www.edheads.org/activities/simple-machines/, this site brings everyday objects around the house and helps students identity them as simple machines.  The culminating activity is collaborative groups to create a short video using http://goanimate.com/ to summarize their learning. If, the students are advanced enough they may take on the challenge of entering a Rube Goldberg contest http://www.rubegoldberg.com/