Second Semester Project-Sea Perch and Pribilof Exchange 2009-2010
Second semester was a very busy one for us! We were all involved in building bridges for the first ever Engineering in the Middle Extravaganza hosted by Women in Technology and Maui Economic Development Board. 
That took place in late January. You can see the exciting time we had by clicking on this link, which will take you over to that website. Make sure you scroll down to the third story and you will see how much fun we had!
That took us through February, and about that time, we became involved with a little robotics project created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, SEA PERCH. Sea Perch seemed to be the next step for us in our three years doing research at Waihe'e. See there is a rule in the Hawaii Department of Education that says that you shall not go past your knees in the ocean. For safety reasons of course. You know how far you get by wading to your knees? Not far enough. So we needed a water robot who could do the sampling for us.
Mrs. Prevenas wrote away to Sea Perch and BEGGED them to send us two materials kits to make two sea perch robots. She thought that she could have one group working on making a sea perch, and the other watching, and then making it a few steps behind the other team. In that way, there would always be someone teaching someone else and the club always involved in the making of this technology.
But Mrs. Prevenas was kinda worried about working with robots and circuits and stuff. She has done many things before, but never did any wiring or soldering before. Her fingers were crossed that someone might be able to help her. And lucky for us it was the most amazing mentor you could imagine us to have, PLUS she had made and worked with Sea Perch before!!!
Dr. Dee Symmonds came to us through our Engineer Talk on Engineering Education Week coordinated through Women in Technology. As Mrs. P listened to her talk, it became really clear that this super engineer was meant to be at Kalama! Dr. Dee generously agreed to mentor us through our first Sea Perch baby steps and help us get our project running. She even got us thinking about mounting a digital camera and taking water samples further off shore! Our club was so happy to have Dr. Dee help us!
So we got started in late March, cutting and marking the pipes. It wasn't too long that we were soldering, and wiring, and mounting motors. If you click on the Sea Perch project link over to the right, you can see some of our adventure. Dr. Dee helped us see that we could do what we thought was hard. She helped us so MUCH! We are so happy that she spent the time with us :)
One of the ideas that Mrs. P wanted to do, was to use Sea Perch to do water sampling with the Pribilof Island students. They were coming in early May, and out goal was to have Sea Perch ready, so they could see it work and then build one for their sampling up in the Bering Sea!
Dr. Dee heard about their visit and really stepped it up a notch. She came twice a week to help us out. As much help as she gave us, it wasn't enough to be ready for when the Alaskan students came to visit. We had our field trip to Waihe'e without the Sea Perch functioning, yet. Our protocols for old school temperature and turbidity are links. Here is the old protocol for sand, and the sand data sheet as well.
On the day that we had our cultural and scientific share-a-thon, May 6, Dr. Dee helped staff the Sea Perch station and was right there to talk the the St. Paul Island students about Sea Perch. Mrs. Kushin blew us all away when she said, "Oh, we already have Sea Perch. We made it a few summers back at the Summer Institute Workshop!" WOW! We truly have been thinking alike, and now we both have Sea Perch to share our ocean research too!
So now we are looking forward to August, when we can begin our Sea Perch engineering project at Waihe'e. Ms. Davilla Riddle will be working with the Science Club this summer in the hopes that it will be functioning and ready to go by the time school starts!
Jungle to Jungle First Semester Project 2009-10
Our first project was a collaboration between Kalama and Jungle to Jungle, a non profit educational technology group. J2J met with Science Club early in August and connected us with a group of students in Peru near the source of the Amazon River. We used OOVOO software as a videoconferencing platform to exchange information with the scientists and students. Each member of the club 'adopted' the responsibility of learning about an Amazon creature and then sought out it's niche double here on Maui.
After the scientists came back to Maui
in early October, we all drew our creatures and Mrs. P combined them
on a collaborative mural. Then we painted the creatures and completed
the mural. It was really a lot of
fun and we learned so much! Here is a picture of us holding up our
mural.
Our next projects are all about engineering. We have formed two teams, one team is working on popsicle stick bridges and the other team is working on marshmellow catapaults. Maui Economic Development Board and Women in Technology is sponsoring three middle schools here on Maui this year, as we try and have a smaller competition here on Maui before we go over to the Junior Engineering Symposium on Oahu. Ms. Riddle is coordinating the bridge, and Mrs. Prevenas the catapault.
Here are some spaghetti bridges we made at our December Christmas Party meeting.
This one won the competition.
We made marshmellow catapaults out of index cards, rubber bands, and pencils to get the idea of propulsion and made a bridge out of spagetti and marshmellows to get the idea of arches and strength. The three middle schools, Iao, Maui Waena, and Kalama, will get together at the end of January to test all of the creations. It is the first year of this project. Hopefully it will expand to include more students and more schools next year.
Our Advisors
This year two of our science teachers have joined forces to bring us an after school enrichment club. Ms. Davilla Riddle and Mrs. Maggie Prevenas hold club meetings every Monday after school from 2pm until 4 pm. Science Club has been meeting since the second week of school. We have done some really cool projects.
