Working with metal
Level: Year 7-8 Technology
Wind Machine unit: 8- 10 hours
School: Edgecumbe College
Teacher: Steve Jeffares
Concerned by the lack of metal technology units at intermediate level, as well as reports from industry about a lack of technically skilled graduates in this area, Edgecumbe College Technology HOD Steve Jeffares created a unit specifically to address these issues and to help support good Technological Practice in secondary school. In this unit, Year 7 and 8 students learnt fundamental metalwork skills such as tapping and threading to create a unique wind machine.
Edgecumbe College functions as a local centre for learning in Technology, providing facilities and classes for students from nine satellite schools in the Bay of Plenty. These students travel to Edgecumbe College for a day at a time, and have, over the year, 12 hours learning in each of a range of technologies including biotech, food, electronics, wood, textiles and metal.
"In Year 7 we give students good exposure to work in sheet metal and in spot welding and through that we try to introduce them to engineering." Steve explains. "Of course, they are still quite young and don't have the strength to do a lot of things or use some of the tools, but it's great to introduce students to the nature of metals early, otherwise they can have a very steep climb later on in secondary school."
Steve's initial inspiration for the wind machines came from a senior secondary school unit where students created wind turbines that Steve thought could serve his purposes well if simplified for Years 7 and 8.
Planning
Steve says that planning for the unit was fairly simple as his focus for this project was on teaching a very specific set of skills.
"The planning is about guaranteeing outcomes. The secret at this level is knowing what we want students to learn, so we failsafe all aspects that aren't critical to that. For example, some parts have to be drilled absolutely precisely so we set up a jig or template so it's absolutely precise. This means that students can focus on the skills we wish them to gain: the tapping and threading, using nuts and bolts, using snips and getting the mechanism to work. So it's about ensuring that each student can finish and feel success, because at intermediate level, take-home projects are hugely important."
Delivery
The unit started with Steve explaining the challenge and showing the students a prototype wind machine. Steve made sure the students understood that creativity was encouraged and that the prototype could be adapted and changed as long as it performed its basic function.
While Steve feels that many projects spend far too much time on planning and brief development, leaving out much of the technical 'middle bit', he is quick to stress that planning and background knowledge were still crucial in this project.
"The front end of the curriculum is still really important. We don't move into the workshop until we get our heads around what we are trying to do here, and that certainly pays dividends later on," Steve says.
Steve then used PowerPoint, video clips, and chalk and talk to demonstrate the key skills of the project, and then introduces some scientific fundamentals. Steve feels that this not only links well to several strands of the curriculum but also offers a crucial understanding that informs student practice.
"We like to focus on the science behind things – if we introduce the periodic table and basic atomic structure before they go into the workshop, students really do see the relationships between the atomic structure of stuff and how it behaves. We talk about malleability, bending strength and tensile strength, so students start to understand the relationships between materials from a base of elementary scientific knowledge. So we really try to tap into the characteristics of technological products strand without starting halfway up the ladder."
Steve then moved the class into the workshop, demonstrating safe use of the machinery and tools, such as drills, tin snips and spanners, before letting the students work independently to put their new knowledge in to practice.
Once the students carried out the necessary tapping, threading, cutting and final assembly of the separate components of their wind machines, these were taken to a fan for testing.
"Students loved that testing part, where they put the pitch on the propeller, put it in front of a fan and away it goes," Steve says.
Challenges
While Steve feels the unit went well, there were significant challenges that he had to overcome throughout. One of the biggest was structuring student activity around the limited resources available.
"We only have two threading apparatus, and we have to make sure students can all keep working. To keep them all busy, we would have a couple of students tapping, a few threading a rod, some working on the drill press and the rest working on the tin snips."
Budget was another issue. All-up costs are limited to $3 per student per day and Steve has to factor in the cost of running the machinery, maintenance and materials to reconcile everything in terms of affordability.
Steve also feels that choosing the right materials, such as sheet-metal light enough for the children to cut with snips, can have a huge impact on student confidence.
"This material is difficult to source but we do have a generous benefactor of light sheet metal. For the students to feel comfortable with materials means being able to safely and successfully work with them," Steve explains. "Dexterity was a big concern here as there's a huge range of skill levels at that age, with some students quite naturally dextrous and others with no experience using scissors. Even clockwise or anticlockwise can be a problem, so we often fell right back to 'righty tighty, lefty loosey'."
Outcomes
The level of creativity in the outcomes surprised Steve – many of the students came up with a range of different moving figures on their wind machines such as skiers, surfers and motorbikes while still creating a functioning product that answered the basic brief.
The students also took away a knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, the connection between science and technology.
"I now have many intermediate level kids who want a copy of the periodic table for their bedroom wall. They also understand how a crank works and how we were converting a rotary motion from the wind through to a reciprocating motion to get our figures to go up and down, and most of them could discuss that later on."
Steve is most pleased however with the level of different skills picked up by the students and the enjoyment and confidence the students gained from working with what can be a challenging material.
"I was really pleased that everybody finished, because I really wanted students to understand that they could construct these things themselves," Steve says. "They really enoyed the tapping, threading and all gained that sense of satisfaction from making something that functions really well. The icing on the cake was having students including threaded elements into later projects without assistance."
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