6 minute read
Engineering Design Projects with Empathy
INA PATEL, GRADE 4 TEACHER
It was a Friday afternoon in April of my sophomore year in college, and I decided to head home for some home-cooked food.
My dad arrived at my dorm after he finished work, and soon we were headed out of the city to Cleveland’s western suburbs. We were minutes away from our house when an SUV veered out of its lane and hit our car head on. The force of the SUV sent our Toyota Camry backward, and our car only stopped with the help of a utility pole. It was a miracle we survived. I walked away from the accident with a few broken bones and cuts, but my dad was a different story. The entire driver’s side column had collapsed onto his hips and legs. He was trapped. When the paramedics cut him out of the car, we were certain he would never walk again. My dad had shattered his hip as well as his right femur, both tibias, and both fibulas. When he was finally discharged from the hospital six months later, he arrived home with strange-looking devices on his legs. Each leg was surrounded by two metal circular rings attached by vertical rods. These rings held pins that went directly into the bones in his legs. These devices were responsible for allowing my dad to regain the ability to walk.
Fourth graders apply their knowledge of muscles and bones to build a prosthetic arm using the human-centered design approach.
The ability to heal the most irreparable bone and muscle damage is astounding. As I look back now, I see that it was more than a biological knowledge that aided in the healing process. It was an amazing feat of engineering. Roughly 50 years before that fateful day, Gavriil Abramovich Ilizarov, a general practitioner in Serbia, designed a curious device after many of his patients returned from World War II with hopeless musculoskeletal injuries. (Note: the first variation of the external fixator can be traced back to Hippocrates who used this external “shackle” device for maintaining a tibia fracture nearly 2,000 years ago.) Seeing a demand that needed to be met, Ilizarov invented the first external fixator, in 1944. Antibiotics were scarce in Serbia, and he knew he had to figure out a way to help his patients. Serendipitously, what Ilizarov stumbled upon through designing and redesigning was a device that would revolutionize bone regeneration. He created a device that could be placed externally on a patient’s leg when internal placement was not possible, due to the severity of the injury sustained by the skin and muscle. This revolutionary device was not introduced to the Western world until 1981 when a group of Italian orthopedic surgeons went to Serbia to watch Ilizarov perform the placement surgery on one of his patients. It was this precise device that was used on my dad 15 years later. What Ilizarov created extended beyond the field of biology—unknowingly, he applied the steps of the engineering design process in order to develop his external fixator and meet the needs of his patients.
President Herbert Hoover defined engineering, when in its nascent form, as a profession that “elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life.” The field of engineering focuses on creating technologies that will be useful to people, improve their welfare, and raise quality of life. This is what Ilizarov did all those years ago in Serbia. He saw a need, and he responded to his patients’ injuries. His invention allowed his patients to walk again— to have a normal life. Without meaning to, Ilizarov moved beyond pure science into the field of engineering. He asked questions, tinkered, and sought to find a solution to a problem. At Brimmer, this is what the Lower School STEAM curriculum aims to teach our students.
Students learn to program a device they designed that can sort and pick up various recycling objects using LEGO WeDo 2.0.
The Stanford d.school utilizes a variant of the design process. In their EDP, the first step is empathy. That is exactly how Ilizarov (though not a self-proclaimed engineer) and Hoover defined the practice of engineering. The Oxford English Dictionary defines empathy as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” We spend a great deal of time at the beginning of fourth grade talking about empathy. What does it mean? How do we show empathy? As we explore the central theme of the year, “What is culture and identity?,” students are asked what those terms mean to them and how they can help us empathize with individuals all over the world. The fourth grade engineering design projects are an extension of these themes.
Over the past few years, the fourth grade curriculum has evolved to cover many elements of engineering. Students actively engage in the engineering design process (EDP): brainstorming, tinkering, building, testing, and redesigning. Because Brimmer begins its STEAM curriculum in the PK, by the time students arrive in fourth grade they are very comfortable using the EDP. They have already engaged in multiple engineering design projects throughout their time in Lower School. They have designed space rovers, light-up owl pins, and Boston-themed arcade games. By fourth grade, students instinctively engage in the various steps of EDP without needing explicit instruction. As with any content information studied in previous grade levels, fourth graders are taught to take the EDP a step further.
One of our first engineering design projects of the year weaves together science, social studies, and math curricula. Students learn about basic elements of electricity, how electricity is brought to communities, and the advantages and drawbacks of clean energy. They explore the energy concerns in India and Japan (countries studied as part of the FourthFest curriculum) and debate the cost-effectiveness of bringing clean energy solutions to these communities. Fourth graders empathize with the needs of these communities and how different they are from their own. Using learned math concepts such as volume, area, and perimeter, students build a scale version of a village. Each team’s village includes houses, apartments, places of worship, and significant land and water forms. Students are then challenged to build a series of circuits to power each structure in their Indian and Japanese villages. Applying their knowledge of clean energy, they are tasked with switching their battery power to a clean energy source, such as a wind turbine or solar panel, to light up structures. Students learn that though clean energy is the right choice for the environment, it is not always an easy choice for a community.
In another engineering design project, students spend a few weeks in an in-depth exploration of the muscular and skeletal systems and watch a short documentary on the United States military’s efforts to develop and build a prosthetic arm for soldiers. Students are not simply tasked with building an arm that can pick up an object. They are asked to consider the user’s point of view. Will the prosthetic arm be comfortable? Will it be lightweight?
One of the last projects of the year incorporates programming, using the Lego ® Education WeDo 2.0. Students are tasked with building and programming robotic devices that help recycling facilities pick up and sort recycled material, using a block coding program. Creativity and hands-on learning are the essential skills used to create these innovative devices. Students created trucks with sweepers, helicopters with reels, and boats with grabbers, just to name a few.
As I reflect on the fateful day of our car accident, I realize it drives so much of my work with the Brimmer STEAM curriculum. At Brimmer, we inspire and encourage our students to be thinkers and doers beyond the scope of the classroom. Our students will enter the workforce with the skills, tools, and empathy needed to turn their ideas into innovative realities. The engineering design projects provide the vehicle to translate foundational thinking into innovative doing. Our focus on empathy allows students to create and design prototypes with human needs in mind. Like Ilizarov before them, our students are given the skills and foundational knowledge necessary to seek solutions to better humanity. They are taught that empathy is what drives innovation forward. Teaching 21st-century skills, including collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and problem solving, across all grade levels at Brimmer, prepares our students to face further challenges ahead.
