Project: Send something to space

Last week, Will Richardson spoke at Renbrook School in West Hartford. We spent much of the day talking about education - what it is vs. what it could or should be. When he talked about a high school class from the midwest that actually designed, built, and delivered water purification systems to eight locations in Haiti, it captured my attention. What could we do -- really do -- that would impact our kids and others? That question will take longer than a week to answer.

It led to another question -- what are the kids already asking? What problem would they enjoy tackling? Rewind to October 14, 2012. Felix Baumgartner broke world records with his jump from the edge of space. The day after the jump, my physics students watched the Red Bull Stratos Project video of his historic jump. Questions abound. We end up looking around on You Tube to find video of people sending objects to the edge of space (not quite as high as Baumgartner's jump), and the class erupts with questions about whether we can do this. At the time, I suggested that they look into it, and perhaps we would. Here we are four months later, and we have done little more than talk about maybe doing something. So when we had some time to talk about plans during Will Richardson's workshop, our department head gave us permission to dedicate one day a week as "prototype day" so today was the first prototype day for the physics kids. Project: send something to space.

The class period saw lots of ideas and less research, but it's a start. Kids want to send so many different things to space. It's still hard to keep my mouth shut and suggest that they can find the answer to their questions through research. The only ideas I vetoed were those that included sending something that's alive. Prototype day may become a day where I get to ask a lot of questions. The end of the year feels shockingly close when I am looking at an open-ended project I have never seen done before, but I would so love to see my students design and build a device that they send up with a weather balloon, track it, and retrieve their package. What a victory that would be!