Springing Ahead into Engineering Design in Life Science...As I have revisited my Final Fall Reflection I am excited and curious as to see my students' prototypes of a heart valve. Furthermore, with great optimism I feel that I will be amazed with their ingenuity. I've learned how to trust and release responsibility to my students and facilitate during their design process. It can be quite challenging to keep my ideas to myself, but I have learned that there is no failure in failing as long as we learn from our mistakes and can move forward to achieve our goals.
The timeline below shows how the Circulatory System was introduced with student's exploring with models of mechanical pumps. The students quickly identified the pressure pump versus the siphon pump as the best model for the heart because of the one direction of flow due to the valves in the pressure pump, modeling the function of the heart's valves. Another model explored, when students were able to collect quantitative and qualitative data as evidence to support students' conclusions that the heart works very hard and is the strongest muscle in the body. Students as a class have read background information and viewed videos on the structures and functions of the heart and will be experiencing an incredible exploration by dissecting a sheep heart. Students will be able to see and to feel the structures of a heart, along with being able to compare and contrast right side of heart vs. left side to collect evidence to support the conclusion of structure being affected by its function.
The final ImagineIT project is for students to design and create a heart valve prototype from common materials, such as non-latex gloves, latex rubber dishwashing gloves, transparent tubes, marbles, sandwich bags, sponge, paper towels, modeling clay, graduated cups, transparent tape, and plastic cups. Students will follow the engineering design of exploration, to meet criteria of valve allowing fluid to pass quickly in one direction, while allowing less than 30 mL through every 10 seconds in the other direction. Furthermore, continuing design process of testing and refining designs, sharing and comparing. My wildest hopes for my ImagineIT implementation is to ignite the spark and motivate future biomedical engineers.
The timeline below shows how the Circulatory System was introduced with student's exploring with models of mechanical pumps. The students quickly identified the pressure pump versus the siphon pump as the best model for the heart because of the one direction of flow due to the valves in the pressure pump, modeling the function of the heart's valves. Another model explored, when students were able to collect quantitative and qualitative data as evidence to support students' conclusions that the heart works very hard and is the strongest muscle in the body. Students as a class have read background information and viewed videos on the structures and functions of the heart and will be experiencing an incredible exploration by dissecting a sheep heart. Students will be able to see and to feel the structures of a heart, along with being able to compare and contrast right side of heart vs. left side to collect evidence to support the conclusion of structure being affected by its function.
The final ImagineIT project is for students to design and create a heart valve prototype from common materials, such as non-latex gloves, latex rubber dishwashing gloves, transparent tubes, marbles, sandwich bags, sponge, paper towels, modeling clay, graduated cups, transparent tape, and plastic cups. Students will follow the engineering design of exploration, to meet criteria of valve allowing fluid to pass quickly in one direction, while allowing less than 30 mL through every 10 seconds in the other direction. Furthermore, continuing design process of testing and refining designs, sharing and comparing. My wildest hopes for my ImagineIT implementation is to ignite the spark and motivate future biomedical engineers.