Press Release

Schoolhouse parent, Paul Fitzgerald, of South Burlington, started the first Jr. First Lego League (Jr. FLL) team in Vermont.  The “Lego Bolts” is based at The Schoolhouse, which has embraced a five year vision to blend its 40 year tradition of academic excellence with a 21^st century emphasis on science and engineering. Lego First League is an international organizing that promotes engineering through local, regional, national and international competitions. Jr. FLL is the level of competition for children enrolled in grade 4 or less. The students meet for 6-8 hour sessions. During that time, students selected a project, researched the project, designed and tested a solution and presented their work to an authentic audience. This year’s task was “Body Forward”, which challenged students to work with a biomedical engineering problem of their choosing.

Seven year olds Luke Fitzgerald (South Burlington) and Zoe Boray (Winooski) joined forces with 8 year old Miro Gohacki (Hinesburg) to fix the main problems with casts: they stink and are itchy. Students interviewed people who had been in casts and used the internet to watch videos of doctor’s placing casts on a patients body. The students also used a variety of model casts so that they could better understand how a cast effects how someone feels.

The students then built prototype casts both using lego bricks and with the 3-D modeling program, lego digital designer, which is a free download from Lego. The students easily recognized the limits of building with actual bricks versus an unlimited supply and variety of virtual bricks.

During all sessions, the builders engage in a variety of “quick” builds, where the builders make a lego project for a specific goal, such as something that is scary or strong. The students have five minutes to complete the activity before they share their designs with one another to get positive feedback and suggestions for improvements.

Paul Fitzgerald believes that projects, such as Jr. FLL best meet the needs of students because the project integrates students with the larger world, which requiring students to use all of their literacy skills. The students hope to present their work later this spring at the UVM Medical School. A blog of the entire process can found at http://logobolts.blogspot.com/.

1/13/11

Today's sesson focused largely on developing our skills and imagination using the digital designer. Both Luke and Zoe made numerous models and priced them too. 

1/27/11

Tonight was a a major break because the builders discovered that they could use features of legos to make a better cast. The builders thought that if a cast had hinges, it would be lifted to allow for cleaning of the skin. Likewise, a cast could be removed and cleaned if it was made from legos.

In this first image, Zoe is constructing a working prototype using the hinge design while Miro and Luke work to build a virtual cast using the digital designer.

This image illustrates some new builders, working on building something scary, through the use of their imagination. They struggled at first but were heartened when we explored the incorporation of their imaginations into their builds. This representative reasoning was achieved relatively quickly after a vivid demonstration of using a lego flat piece as a shark fin. The other students immediately grasped the idea that their designs needed only suggest the scary image to be effective and got eagerly to work.

 Zoe shows off the new design, with a hinge.

In this video, Zoe explains why we have addressed the smell and itch problem with our hinge design.

1/6/2011

What a great session!

In this session, we made our first serious strides toward better understanding a cast. The builders also made several designs using the digital designer.

In this first video, Luke is giving Miro feedback on his first construction challange, to build something scary. The feedback protocol is to talk about things they liked and about how the design makes them feel. The builders were encouraged to use their imagination to help them interpret the selection of colors and blocks along with the arrangement of blocks.  I thought it was fascinating that both of the boys chose reptiles for their scary build.

In this video, Miro gives Luke feedback on Luke's solution to the design challenge.

In the two pictures below, Luke and Miro are wearing surrogate casts while they build so that they can develop an appreciation of what it is like to wear a cast.  The mock casts were made from wraps of toilet paper.

 In this picture, the children are signing the mock casts to learn more about the social support that peers give an injured friend when they are injured. The builders appeared fascinated by the importance of signing a cast.

1/20/2011

What a week!

We began serious work on our display this week. In the top photo Luke and Emmet worked together to develop a story about how someone might break an arm and need a cast. Luke is writing the text, where he describes a skiing accident from a cliff jump.

In this video, Luke describes the story and shares a picture he made of the story.

In this photo, Zoe is working on some pictures of the problems with casts right now. The group research indicated that casts can be stinky and itchy. Zoe's pictures illustrate this clearly. At the same time, Miro was drafting a note on what makes casts cool so that we can be sure that our design retains these features. Our research indicated that casts should be easily written upon and should come in bright and varied colors.

 Nari dropped by for a quick visit to learn more about the Lego Bolts and our work to develop a better cast.

This video illustrates Luke fitting and comparing the lego cast to Emmet's arm to make any necessary adjustments.

This image illustrates our initial cast prototype. This cast allows for air to move through the cast while limited the motion of the broken wrist/arm. It holds a thumb firmly in place and it uses four different colors and can be easily removed for cleaning.