Not one but two teams of Paradise Valley Elementary students
rose to the challenge this weekend – the
“Tech Challenge,” that is – and were recognized for their
innovative engineering designs.
Not one but two teams of Paradise Valley Elementary students rose to the challenge this weekend – the “Tech Challenge,” that is – and were recognized for their innovative engineering designs.
The “Pike Punks,” a fifth-grade team led by parent adviser Kathleen Morgan, earned the “Best Entry Grand Prize,” while the sixth grade “Catch of the Day” team led by parent adviser Fred Schenkelberg won “Best Design Valued Under $50.”
As the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose hosted its 17th annual Tech Challenge, 700 students, including some from high schools, comprising more than 180 teams converged on Parkside Hall in San Jose with their own unique solutions to this year’s challenge based on a real world problem – extracting (plastic) predatory, non-native pike fish from (a 60-gallon simulated) Lake Davis in Northern California.
Morgan’s team of five students, all in Carol Ferri’s class at Paradise Valley, said they were very happy – and very surprised – to learn they won the top prize in their division made up of fifth- and sixth-grade teams.
“When we heard our name we were in shock,” said 10-year-old Amanda Morgan. “Our parents were howling, we were jumping with joy and shaking with excitement, and of course, yelling, too.”
The win was an unexpected payoff for the team’s hard work, they said.
“It felt like everything in the long run had paid off,” said Zachary Freiberg, 11, who also said the team is anxious to “do it all again next year.”
It was that level of enthusiasm, confidence in themselves and lots of hard work that made their project special, Morgan said.
“It was amazing to me how quickly they caught on and how receptive they were,” said Morgan, who is a systems engineer. “I usually work with 35-year-olds or thereabout, and I really appreciated their approach. They have a way of simplifying things, getting rid of complications that you don’t need. They are more clean with it – simple is the genius.
“The other part that was really good is the level of confidence they built up. They came to believe they could problem-solve and be a part of a team. They had to communicate well and make sure we all understood what each other was doing.”
The students appreciated the team-aspect of the project.
“I really liked working as a team,” 11-year-old Zach Thomas said.
Working independently and then coming together as a team with ideas helped develop the design for the team’s device.
“We used prototypes, observations during test trials and optimization of ideas to come up with our design,” Zach said.
Deciding on the device took quite a bit of testing, rejecting and remaking, according to the team.
Katie Machado, 10, said the team knew the basic requirements – that the device weigh no more than 20 pounds and be no more than six-feet high and three-feet wide – and developed the idea from there.
“We knew we needed a kind of base and crane and trap door simulation,” she said. “We started by making prototypes and taking flash uses and them pulling them all together into one.”
Morgan, who said her father, Jim Kropff, a retired auto shop teacher at Gilroy High also worked with the team, said she was impressed with how the kids picked up the engineering terms and processes.
“They developed a real sophistication in terms,” she said. “But they also grasped the process of breaking the problem up into components, and seeing that maybe this part will work and that part won’t, but you can keep the working part without throwing the whole thing away.”
It is precisely these kinds of ideas that Taylor Pencer, 10, though she would learn when she decided to join the team.
“It was really fun for us,” she said. “I wanted to learn basic engineering skills and be a part of a project like this from beginning to end. Mrs. Ferri encouraged us all the way.”
The design they eventually came up with, after working several hours most Wednesday afternoons since the middle of January, is a complex device made from simple parts.
“They used a golf ball retriever attached to a lazy Susan with a hinge,” Morgan said. “They had three minutes to get the plastic fish from about 10 feet of water. They created a basket … attached with fishing line and a fishing reel, with trap doors that opened up on the bottom.”
The team was recognized for its innovative design with a most creative award. For that they received a $25 Tech store gift certificate.
The competition was divided into three parts: the actual testing of the device, the project notebook the team kept and a presentation or marketing piece, which could be either an online presentation or a poster board creation.
“The second piece, the design journal, basically showed the judges, do you have a project plan,” Morgan said. “You have your team name what the goals were, how much money you spent and why, and why was your design they way it was, your focus and objectives, your roles and responsibilities and why, as well as the design piece and three different test results.”
The teams talked to the judges, without their advisers, Morgan said, and she believes their enthusiasm and their ownership of the project was clearly recognizable.
Schenkelberg, a reliability engineer, also said his team’s independence in creating their design was important.
“The part of the adviser is to give them tools,” he said. “That’s what the Tech folks really want us to do. First make sure they’re safe – if they have some metal or some wood to cut, and they can’t cut it safely, then I’d cut it for them. But otherwise, this was their project.”
Schenkelberg said his son, Mitchell, classmate Krista Cavanaugh and part-time team member Kenny Lee, all sixth graders, worked Wednesday afternoons and some weekends since February to complete the project.
“If they had problems or questions and came to me, I would offer advice, but I felt it was important to see conflict development, let them run into and let them experiment it,” he said. “They learned to explore options, set up experiments, weigh what was better about this idea and worse about that one … I think it’s a great experience for kids of this age.”
The Pike Punks went home with a $150 savings bond, an HP 302 basic scientific calculator and a behind-the-scene tour of the HP Pavilion.
The Catch of the Day team’s prize earned a HP 302 basic scientific calculator.
