Focus Group Notes: JV InvenTeam
6/15/17
PARTICIPANT BACKGROUND: *This focus group team was transitioning from JV invent > invent teams
Mo Wong (female) was a successful JV InvenTeam teacher who “matriculated” to an InvenTeam this year. She is here at MIT with her InvenTeam that will be showcasing. She is was high school science teacher when a JV InvenTeam facilitator. She became science coordinator at her large, suburban high school in Houston. She had a difficult time with the hands-on aspect of building with InvenTeams.
Laura Baird teaches at the Energy Institute, a STEM magnet school in Houston Public Schools, and is helping us fine-tune a JV InvenTeam unit. She is our “newest” facilitator. I believe she might have been an engineer prior to being a teacher. She is an Excite Award Recipient.
Both Mo and Laura teach students who are underrepresented in STEM by race and ethnicity.
Patrick Verdun is a successful JV InvenTeam teacher who is here at MIT for Excite Award Training. He’s very hands-on, and is from a small, rural school in Oregon. His small district has rallied around an innovation theme and JV InvenTeams is helping the community embrace invention and innovation as a way of learning and living.
Jonathan Horung is another successful JV InvenTeam teacher in a rural, coastal town in Oregon. He has done wonderful things using JV to show kids (and administrators) the possibilities with hands-on learning. He’s put in place a pre-engineering program at his high school. He is an Excite Award Recipient.
Patrick and Jonathan teach in schools where more than 40% of the students are eligible to receive free and reduced price meals.
What support network do you wish you had while running your projects?
Patrick: Shoe sold project was done first with high school students 4-5 weeks for in class sessions
Felt it was user friendly
There was a surplus of teaching materials
Videos were helpful for teacher and students
Overall administration was accommodating
Electronic textiles > good for middle school students
Tasks that took more time for results were better suited for high schoolers > enjoyed arduino programming.
How to make the project self sustaining > how to cut costs ex use silicon with dish soap instead of vitaflex.
Laura: Growing Green Project /Hydroponic Gardening
Hiccups at the start; reference pics weren’t matching, tube sizes were incorrect so had to go out and purchase own.
Emailed Liza a lot -- which she found helpful so she could warn next groups of these types of issues and how to address them.
Laura: Hands on materials to show the process would be helpful, even if a previously done model for certain steps in the process would help confirm if students/teacher were on the right path.
Mo: Shoe Sole project
Took a whole year when doing it as an after school program, 1 hour a week after school.
This format doesn’t allow to mix different stages of the project because of the waiting period (i.e sole molds)
Mo: Growing Green Project /Hydroponic Gardening:
Slow progress, after school once a week.
Time and attendance was the biggest problem.
This school was equivalent to a title 1 school, so the program was competing with other after school activities going on at the same time.
Would be nice to show what else you can do with the other things from molds
Integrating kits into the system?
Happens naturally -- the more you do it you learn which lessons could be taught with other curriculum items.
Key Overall Takeaways:
These projects can be intimidating from the outside looking in.
Mindset is you need to be a science teacher… but really just need to be able to work well with the kids.
Safety concern: kids getting hurt when working with tools.
Letting the class go on their own can be intimidating for teachers in an older generation with set curriculum.
It’s opposite of teacher directed lessons.
Kids would youtube it if they didn’t know how to do something.
Kids would sometimes get frustrated if teacher isn’t already an expert...but telling them that everyone is learning it together helps keep the ownership on them and not feel like they’re being spoon fed materials.
Gets them thinking why it’s important> agriculture aspects of every step in the project to show how it relates to other things in the world.
Identify problems that can be solved with the shoes: fashion, waterproof, sneaky
Nice to have a final audience of their peers to look forward to, it keeps the students engaged and excited throughout the experience.
Pdf version of binders (new this past yr) for students to use on school computers was extremely helpful - especially when you’re running the same course with multiple classes a year.
“Remind” instant messaging system helped for peer to peer and student to peer communication.
Idea of remote student collaboration was interesting to all
Anything you wish you knew before you started?
Jonathan: Not really
Laura: Maybe I could’ve been a little more prepared by some testing with materials given before starting the class, to better foresee potential struggles.