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.

We're working on a cast!

Today was a great session!

Luke and Zoe learned to use the Lego digital designer today.

The first design challenge was to just build for fun. Zoe chose to build an alien whereas Luke chose to build a tree.

Luke loved the eyes that Zoe added to her design. He also like the textures that she used because she combined both bumpy and smooth pieces. She also added a fireman with a brown coat because her alien was a fire alien.

Zoe loved Luke's tree design because it had branches and different colors. Luke also used a new building technique because he added pieces from below instead of stacking. His tree had opposite branching and Zoe thought it looked like a Palm Tree.

We then took some time to discuss our favorite medical technologies. We made a list of what we liked about each technology.




Zoe liked casts because she wanted to know how to put one one. Luke liked casts because you can add your name to it!

Zoe could not think of what she liked about a wheelchair but Luke knew that he liked electric ones that can move on their own.

Luke liked the fact that ambulances are red and Zoe liked the sounds.

We then shared the things we liked and chose our favorite two technologies. Luke liked a cast and a wheelchair the most and Zoe like the cast and the wheelchair the most too. However, Luke reminded us that he really wanted to learn about cots. Zoe also wanted to learn about cots but she especially liked oxygen tents because her sister needed one when she had the croup.

We then took a break and did a quick build on something healthy. Neither Luke nor Zoe could identify their partner's construction but Luke liked the colors and the mix of textures. Zoe used red, yellow and brown.
Luke's shape was tall and thin and used three colors, gray, white and black.

 Zoe then explained that health to her was spaghetti with meatballs and Luke explained that his shape was a tooth brush. They both laughed because their shapes both had to do with mouths.

We then watched a video on how to make a cast to see if this would make us want to learn more about casts.
http://suppliescentral.net/instructions.html

When we finished the video, we were sold. We want to make a lego cast and we will research the important parts of a cast for our next meeting!

Practice Number 2-Working on Medical Devices

Practice was great today! We opened practice with a free build and we reviewed our team norms and construction vocabulary. We reviewed the concept of symmetry, which means that you could fold a design and the two sides would match one another. We also discussed the importance of color because colors can make us think of certain feelings. For example, colors like brown and green make us think of a forest whereas blue and green make us think of the ocean. We also discussed how objects can appear solid because they are made from thick blocks or how objects can appear light because they are made from thin blocks.

During the first build, Luke noticed that Miro placed his light on top of his design so that it would be easy to see. Luke also noticed that Miro successfully integrated two different styles of lego blocks, bionicle and regular.

Miro noticed that Luke used a limited number of colors to make his design and that he liked the empty space. We discussed that empty space is important in a design because it allows light to pass through it and because it allows you to place things inside your design.

We then looked at some medical devices from the Lego. Miro and Luke both correctly identified lots of medical equipment, which started a conversation about what we want to make for our design challenge. The first idea that appeared really exciting was an ambulance.

After this discussion, Luke and Miro worked on designs for a wheel chair. While the boys were building, we talked a little about why someone might be in a wheel chair. The boys said that someone could break a leg, or be born with legs that don't work or you could lose the function of your leg because of a spinal chord injury.

The two constructions were very different form one another, which was exciting. Miro build an awesome wheel chair but the bricks would not allow the wheels to freely spin. We talked about how Miro arrange his blocks differently to allow the wheels to move, which Miro did in no time flat.

Luke's design was limited by the fact that he did not have four wheels. But, Luke made the best of it by designing a ramp for the wheel chair to allow it to slide.

Our next challenge was to build a lego hand. Zoe joined us for this build, which was great because she has fantastic ideas and a positive attitude.

Miro's build was great because it had five different fingers and some of them could slide. The idea of movement was really exciting.

 

Luke's build was similar to Miro's because Luke had five different fingers but Luke left some legos attached to his design that he did not notice at first. Miro wondered if the additional legos were supposed to represent finger nails. Each of the builders eyes lit up upon the realization that none of them had intentionally added nails to their design. Luke immediately modified his design to include nails.

 Zoe's design was the only design to consider a palm. In addition, Zoe focused on the overall shape of the hand and had bricks to suggest fingers.

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At the end of class, we discussed some of the medical problems that interested us so that we could pick a topic for our challenge. We considered the heart, eyes, ears, legs, arms, bones, teeth and our spinal chord. Our homework for next class is to consider which topic we most want to pursue.