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 Teacher Josh Cramer, right, helps seventh- grade pupils Josh Faust, left, and Sara Kaminski with their Rube Goldberg device in his Science of Technology class.
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Robotics, electronics update 'shop' classes in South Park

Robotics, electronics update 'shop' classes in South Park

In past years, pupils in technology education, more commonly known as shop class, at South Park Middle School worked on the traditional projects of building napkin holders and carving wooden fish.

But this year, students there have taken a huge step into the future.

Now, their projects include designing three-dimensional models with a computer, using robotics and electronics to make model elevators function and redesigning remote control cars to master specific functions.

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They have equipment that includes a CNC, or computer numerically controlled, microrouter and a virtual wind tunnel.

For the students who can't get enough during class time, there's an after-school technology club and a week-long summer camp.

"It's a lot of fun," said Alex Spowart, 13, an eighth-grader who is president of the technology club and who participated in the camp this past summer.

The advances in the technical education program at South Park are part of an effort initiated and funded by the National Science Foundation and administered through the State System of Higher Education. They are embraced by South Park technology education teacher Josh Cramer, who has helped the district garner $157,000 in grant money.

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Mr. Cramer's efforts have been strongly supported by the middle school administrators and the district's superintendent Richard Bucchianeri.

"South Park is definitely doing the most with this," said Stanley Komacek, chairman and professor of applied technology at California University of Pennsylvania and the principal investigator on the science foundation project in Pennsylvania.

Dr. Komacek is working with the Steel Center Area Vocational Technical School in Jefferson Hills and the districts that feed into it. Of those 11 districts, five have opted to be part of the program and upgrade their technology education curriculum.

The other districts, in addition to South Park, are Brentwood, West Mifflin, West Jefferson Hills and Elizabeth Forward.

The focus of the curriculum is to prepare students in science, technology, engineering and math so that they are ready for the myriad engineering and engineering-related jobs that are projected to open in the next decade, Dr. Komacek said. Not all of the jobs will require a four-year degree.

"The engineer is the person who does the design and configuration, but for every engineer you need eight to 10 technicians and then even more people in production," he said. "We want to prepare students for the entire spectrum."

In addition to working on more high-tech, engineering-based projects, South Park Middle School students are spending more time in the technology education courses and doing more of their own work.

The curriculum has switched from one that was teacher-directed to one in which projects are student-led. The name of the curriculum has been changed to "Applied Engineering and Technology Education."

Previously, students rotated through the technology education courses for 22 days. This year, all seventh- and eighth-grade students take half-year courses, for a total of 90 days.

Seventh-graders take the design and modeling course and the eighth-grade students take automation and robotics. In addition there are two nine-week electives students can choose.

Students are taught the concepts but then set free to create designs that will meet the criteria of an assignment on their own.

"What Josh is trying to do is get the kids to solve the problems themselves and come up with their own creative solutions," Dr. Komacek said.

During a recent class, seventh-graders were working on a Rube Goldberg Design Challenge, an engineering exercise in which the goal is to use as many steps as possible to achieve a simple action. In this case, the students decided that popping a balloon would be their final action.

Each station along the way must be built on a 15-by-15-inch square and must include the six simple machines, which are: the lever, pulley, wheel and axle, inclined plane, wedge and screw.

The groups were working on such activities as rolling marbles down ramps or pulling levers with strings to initiate action.

Mr. Cramer said he enjoys seeing the devices the students create. "They give me some of the wildest things. They come up with ideas I would never think of," he said.

It's in sharp contrast to the old format of shop classes, where he stood in front of the class with a prototype of whatever they would make and every student would copy it.

"Before we did the same project and Mr. Cramer helped us. Now we do our own separate thing," said Chelsea Carter, 12, a seventh-grader who is member of the after school club.

During club time, Chelsea and classmate Jessica DeAngelis, also 12, are creating a bridge out of balsa wood that they hope to enter in a competition. They designed and tested its weight load on a computer before starting on the physical construction.

In Pennsylvania it's been a state mandate that all middle school students take technology education -- formerly called industrial arts --since the 1970s, Dr. Komacek said.

The majority of the programs in middle schools still resemble the old wood shop format, he said.

But the push is on from both the national and state levels to revamp curriculums and retool with high-tech equipment in order to prepare the students for engineering-related jobs.

South Park Middle School has had such success with the effort because there is administrative support from the top down and a willingness on the part of the shop teacher to keep up with current technology, Dr. Komacek said.

The next step in South Park is to upgrade the high school curriculum and equipment.

For other districts, it may be more difficult to revamp programs if they don't have support for it at all levels, he said. Even with administrative support, there must be faculty who are willing to retrain and to find funding sources for the training and equipment.

The secret to finding funding sources was one of the topics covered during a Dec. 19 presentation South Park gave on its new curriculum to 68 teachers and administrators from surrounding school districts.

The largest donors to South Park's program has been the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, which so far has provided $103,000 to cover the costs of equipment and supplies and to fund the summer camp.

Other funding has come from the National Science Foundation, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, PPG Industries and 84 Lumber.

Some of the funding went to the school's Formula One racing team, which was formed by Mr. Cramer's technology students last year. The team, which creates miniature wooden race cars by designing them on the computer and testing them in the virtual wind tunnel, took first place in the state last spring and fourth place in the national competition held in Nashville last June.

This year, there were so many students interested in competing, tryouts had to be held to determine who could be on one of the two teams of six students.

Alex, the technology club president, won a spot on one of the Formula One teams. He said he's happy about that especially since he has taken all of the technology courses offered at the middle school and this spring won't have any on his academic schedule.

"Sadly, I won't have any classes," he said. "But I'll still have the after school club and the F1 team."

First Published: January 10, 2008, 4:15 p.m.

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Post-Gazette photo Teacher Josh Cramer, right, helps seventh- grade pupils Josh Faust, left, and Sara Kaminski with their Rube Goldberg device in his Science of Technology class.
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