A Real World Application at the High School

by Lynn K. McMullin

In several other blogs, I have mentioned the importance of 21st Century skills and real-world applications in classroom learning. I’m sure everyone is familiar with the concept that knowledge is expanding astronomically – you’ve read or heard that knowledge doubles at some “fill-in-the-blank” rate, whether that rate be every 6 months, or every 12 months, or so on.  But, the point is this: change happens in content knowledge so quickly that what a person knows is becoming secondary to what a person is able to do.

This past weekend, riding in the car, my daughter, grand-daughter, and I were wondering if every state had a Springfield – we could name about a dozen.  In under 5 minutes, my grand-daughter had lists … not only did she find a list of the 34 states with Springfields, but the other countries with Springfields, the 'fictional' Springfields (as in the Simpsons and Father Knows Best), and the people named Springfield (as in Rick or Dusty).  On her cellphone!

This only underscored the experience last week when Superintendent Case and I had the pleasure of attending a class at the high school in which students applied and demonstrated their 21st Century skills in research, math, science, technology, and oral presentation. We both loved it, but more importantly, the students really enjoyed it as well.  And what they had learned had the potential to benefit them in their future real-life decision making.

Dylan Smith, Jeremy Stanhope, Sadeq Al-Aqel, Brieanna Rowley, Sondra and Krista Westerling, Jamel Mayo, and Josh Wood had taken a CADD drawing of a house that Dylan Smith had created in his 8th grade Odyssey project and they “finished” the house, inside and out, top to bottom.  First they obtained the measurements of the house to scale – for example, the living room was 73.86 square meters; the master bedroom was 35.88; the pantry was 3.64;… the garage, 44.82.  The presentation began with this drawing and the measurements of every nook and cranny and continued with the use of charts, graphs, and pictures in PowerPoint.  In their multi-week project, the students equipped their entire home.

First, they researched the pros, cons, and costs of flooring including materials such as bamboo, vinyl, ceramic, porcelain, carpet, and so on. The students knew the chemical compositions, durability, and eco-friendliness, as well as the costs. The students weighed trade-offs such as the fact that bamboo is quickly renewable when compared to hardwoods, but the transportation of imported bamboos from East Asia creates carbon emissions pollution.  The students reported that carpeting contains decabromodiphenyl (for flame retardancy), permethrin (for dust mites), and formaldehyde (for its binding properties). They learned about petrochemicals, plasticizers, and VOC’s (volatile organic compounds)!

As the presentation progressed, we learned about heating options (oil, electric, natural gas), as well as wood and pellet stoves and solar panels (photovoltaic cells) and wind turbines.  (Did you know Jay Leno's "Seahawk" is a self-starter and is capable of producing up to 10kw of power at 6 mph?  The kids did!). 

The students had researched energy-efficient windows and could tell us the potential savings in electricity for both summer air-conditioning and winter heat.  They had even chosen CF (compact fluorescent) light bulbs for their house. On-line, they found a calculator which could predict their household’s savings based on the projected number of lights in each room and the projected amount of time the light burns each day. Click here to try it yourself.

Our students installed an eco-friendly swimming pool (of course!) and had chosen energy-efficient appliances (although they rejected a small, wall-mounted clothes washing machine that sits atop the toilet which uses the wash and rinse water for flushing!). They reported on chemical-free fertilizers for the lawn and chemical-free paint for the walls. They even told us about common products that affect the air quality of our homes – things such as pesticides, nail polish removers, bleach, and ammonia.

At the end of the PowerPoint and oral presentation, in which all of the students participated, we had a chance to ask questions and the kids even gave us a task to complete. They asked us to look at graphs they had made of the flex and stretch of common freezer and sandwich bags, brand-name garbage bags, and even plastic shopping bags (such as from Big Y and Wal*Mart) and determine, based on the data they provided, which were best.

The questions I wanted most to know – what did you learn and how will this help you in the future? One of the students said that the information and products will change a great deal from now until the time when they actually begin choosing flooring and heating for their own homes, but they learned how to do the research and how to make the comparisons, and mostly, they learned the importance of it.