CAPSTONE PROGRAM NEWS | DECEMBER 2015

Exploring Ways to Integrate Learning in

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

By Jeff Cole

Left: Hunter
Lemay and
Andrew MakeyHeindl tinker with
a robot they
designed for
competing in a
high school
robotics
tournament.

Have you ever considered how often we experience STEM

(science, technology, engineering and math) in our lives?
Science provides the basis for understanding our
natural world sun, moon and starslands and oceans
weather, natural disasters, the diversity of nature, animals
(large, small, microbial)plants and foodthe fuel that heats
our homes and powers transportation the list is almost
endless. In todays world, technology means computers and
smartphones, but it goes back to television, radio,
microscopes, telegraph, telescopes, the compass, and even
the first wheel. Engineering designs buildings, roads, and
bridges not to mention almost all of the products we use
on a daily basis but it also tackles todays challenges of
transportation, global warming and environment-friendly
machines, appliances and systems. We only have to look
around to see what improvements to our lives and our homes
have been engineered in the last decade alone. Finally, we
encounter math at the grocery store, the bank, on tax forms,
in dealing with investments and the family budget. Whats
more, every other STEM field depends on mathematics.
In short, STEM is important, because it pervades almost
every aspect of our lives. So why havent more people heard
about it? Lets consider how STEM may effect our students.
STEM is their future the technological age in which they
live and may be key to their career options. In April 2015,
Canadian Business Magazine, in conjunction with Statistics
Canada, identified the 20 best jobs in Canada fields
which are hiring, and which pay the most a somewhat
astonishing 14 of them required postsecondary STEM
education, including each of the top 5 jobs: engineering
manager, statistician & actuary, air traffic controller, oil & gas
drilling supervisor, and mining & forestry manager.
Within CAPSTONE, the Engineering Science course was
created with the belief that we need to encourage our
students to understand and embrace the technology that
affects them every day of their lives. Whats more, the course

Right: Tye
Carnahan,
Marshall Murphy
and Taylor
Fischer create
electric motors
using the
principles of
electromagnetics.

was created with the belief that STEM learning needs to

feature integrated, hands-on, minds-on, real-world activities
that make science, technology, engineering and math
learning accessible, interesting, fun, and relevant. Hopefully,
these approaches will not only help students to learn, but
might also plant the seed of interest that could grow into an
exciting and rewarding STEM career.
Educational awareness of, and focus on, STEM education
has been a talking point in other countries, such as the
United Kingdom and United States, for about 10 years now.
The STEM focus is gradually making its way into the
educational conversation within Canada and Ontario, and I
do believe we will be hearing this term more and more in the
months and years to come. In the meantime, this issue of
CAPSULE features the CAPSTONE programs initial efforts
to structure integrated STEM learning through the
establishment of a robotics curriculum within the Engineering
Science course.

Students do battle at high

school robotics competition
Most people will recognize nothing but net as a phrase that accompanies a
swish shot on the basketball court. But for six CAPSTONE students, the
phrase took on a whole new meaning this semester, and it had nothing to do
with basketball. It was all about robotics.
This fall, Tye Carnahan, Gian Chipongian, Taylor Fischer, Hunter Lemay,
Andrew Makey-Heindl and Marshall Murphy were enrolled in the
Engineering Science course. The students had the opportunity to apply their
learning about engineering to the challenge of building a robot to play a sportlike game called Nothing But Net. The concepts of object manipulation, speed,
power, torque, mechanical power transmission, drivetrain design, lifting
mechanisms and systems integration were all used in the design of their robots,
as were some other principles from science, technology and mathematics.
With their robot creations Chewbotta and Vaderbot, the students traveled
to Castlebrooke Secondary School in Brampton on Saturday, December 5, to
compete against 48 other high school teams in a sanctioned VEX Robotics
Competition qualifying event. The game is played on a 12x12 square field, with
nets positioned in two corners. Two robot Alliances one Red and one Blue
comprised of two teams each, compete in matches consisting of a fifteen
second autonomous period followed by one
minute and forty-five seconds of drivercontrolled play. The object of the game is to
attain a higher score than the opposing
Alliance by scoring your teams balls and
bonus balls into either low or high goals, and
by elevating other robots in your climbing
zone.
The excitement of head-to-head
competition, and a serious desire to pursue
engineering in post-secondary, motivated
the students to spend many hours
designing, testing and tweaking their
creations. Upon arrival, however, the team
was blown away by the sophistication of
other teams robots. It became clear that the
level of attention placed on robotics in some
schools is akin to what many high schools
might devote to their sports programs. Robotics teams from a
few of the high schools arrived complete with mobile
equipment labs, cheering squads, mascots, sponsored
apparel and some really amazing machines. At first, the
CAPSTONE teams felt quite outside of their element, but
quickly settled in to devising their game strategies based on
the competition they saw in the room. Through 6 qualifying
matches, team Vaderbot (Gian Chipongian, Andrew Makey-

Heindl, Hunter Lemay) managed to place a very respectable

15th out of 50 schools, while team Chewbotta (Tye
Carnahan, Taylor Fischer, Marshall Murphy) secured 26th
place. The teams did not qualify for the final set of elimination
matches, but nonetheless left the event on a high note after
playing their best match while allied together in round 6.
All in all, these Engineering Science students have had a
great experience this semester, enjoying the opportunity to
work together, apply their engineering knowledge to an
interesting challenge, and to learn in a hands on way.

The #CAPSTONEblog project has been one of the ways in

which the CAPSTONE program has tried to create an
awareness of its existence, as well as provide answers to the
common question what is this program? for the outsider.
The project has consisted of a series of blog posts written by
students in the program every school day from October 1st
to December 15th, inclusive which were posted on
smcdsbcapstone.ca/blog and tweeted daily using the
hashtag #CAPSTONEblog.
In this two-and-a-half month series of posts by CAPSTONE
students, they write about the many experiences theyve had
in the program, connections theyve made to things that
interest them, opinions that they are developing, and
decisions they are making at this important transitional stage
in their lives. Aside from marketing and describing the
program, the #CAPSTONEblog has also served a very
important educational purpose, in that it required students to
reflect on their learning.
Peter Drucker, an Austrian-born American management
consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed
to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern
business corporation, once wrote: Follow effective action
with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even
more effective action. This is an important step in the
learning process. Most of us go through life viewing our
experiences as isolated, unrelated events. We also view
these happenings simply as the experiences they are, not as
opportunities for learning. Psychologists refer to this type of
life view as an episodic grasp of reality (Feuerstein, Rand,
Hoffman, & Miller, 1980), and it is not a habit we want to pass
along to students. Instead, we want students to get into the
habit of linking and constructing meaning from their
experiences. Such work requires reflection.
Blog, logs or journals are one tool that can be used for
student reflection. Other methods used this semester
included discussion, interviews, and questioning. By posting
and promoting student work through a public blog, however,
there were additional benefits. Some students received
comments on their blogs from people outside the program,
letting them know that their writing mattered to someone else.
Students had the opportunity to reread their own posts, and
to compare what they knew at the beginning of a learning
sequence with what they knew later on. They also had the
chance to read the posts of their classmates, and to compare
their recounts of experiences. This led to a greater diversity in
blog topics, as students were motivated to be unique.

All student blog posts from this semester are searchable on Twitter using
the hashtag #CAPSTONEblog. In addition, each tweet includes the name
of the student author, a brief description of the blog topic, and a link to the
website where it is posted, smcdsbcapstone.ca/blog. There were even a
couple of vlogs (video blogs) submitted this semester, by students Stephen
Valiquette and Madelaine Dagenais.
Stephens
vlog is
patterned after
a Rick Mercer
rant, giving his
answer to the
question:
What do you
want to be?
Madelaines
vlog involved a
few other
classmates as
well, busting
some common
myths about
the so-called
victory lap.

The Couchiching Conservancy is a non-profit, nongovernment land trust supported by individuals people who
want to ensure that special natural places are safeguarded
for the future. Since 1993 the organization has helped to
protect over 11,000 acres of special natural lands in some
cases globally rare ecosystems. Many of these properties
were donated by caring people who wished to leave a living
legacy.

For more information, contact:

CAPSTONE students have had a number of opportunities

to volunteer with the organization, vis--vis its ongoing
renovation project at Grants Woods, as well as participate in
a citizen science data collection for a water quality monitoring
project in the Talbot River watershed. We would like to take
this opportunity to thank the organization for its multi-faceted
involvement with the CAPSTONE program this semester.
The learning experiences that have been provided were a
fantastic complement to students courses of study.

Program website:
www.smcdsbcapstone.ca

Mr. Jeff Cole

CAPSTONE Coordinator
Phone: 705.722.3555 ext. 391
Email: jcole@smcdsb.on.ca

Program blog:
www.smcdsbcapstone.ca/blog
Twitter:
@smcdsbCAPSTONE
#CAPSTONEblog
Instagram:
smcdsbCAPSTONE

There are many people to thank from Lakehead University.

The institutions support for the vision of CAPSTONE
facilitating more confident transitions to post-secondary for
returning high school graduates has been phenomenal.
With the help of Andrea Tarsitano, Associate Vice-Provost
Enrolment & Registrar, we have successfully established an
admissions referral process for students, giving them an
option to enter post-secondary at Lakehead as soon as they
have completed the CAPSTONE program. This is a
phenomenal development, precisely the kind of pathway that
was envisioned for the program when it was originally
conceived.
Beyond this, the programs interaction with Lakehead this
semester has also included a campus tour for students,
participating in the EcoReach and Ontario Master Naturalist
Programs, interviewing Professor Chris Murray, and
participating in a survey research study with Fulbright
Scholar Dr. James Hollenbeck.
We are so thankful for all the support offered by Lakehead
Orillia and look forward to a continued partnership.