International Women's Day and Education

via Good and the Delaware online...

Here is an awesome teacher introducing his students to a task that could change their lives and maybe the lives of many people in the future. They are building seven robots called the SeaPerch after the teacher received a grant from the SeaPerch Foundation (an innovative foundation that trains teachers to teach their students how to build ROVs--remotely operated vehicles). The robots are based on the one that helped to cap last year's Gulf oil spill. The models that the students are building will have a camera attached to it to take underwater photos. The project is headed for a competition at Drexel University where the girls will navigate their robots through a maze and grab objects in a swimming pool.

I really like the teacher's comment in the video that the more challenging a project, the more engaged his students are--this is also one of the goals of the SeaPerch Foundation. I think innovative teaching is asking students to do more and enter the shaky ground where they might make a mistake but have to try to fix it and make it work (there is a stipulation of an extra $20.00 per ROV for changes though students must follow the general blueprint)...there is just no reason to think about gender in this project--but instead it is a really interesting problem for students to solve. I also like that the teacher says that he is learning with his students on the project. We need more teachers like Mitchell Greenberg and more schools like Delaware's Reach Academy.