5th Grade Baking in the Tinker Lab

In 5th Grade Social Studies, students have been studying the Great Depression, WWI and WWII.  During these times people had to “make do”, finding ways of baking without eggs, butter, milk, and such.  Students also explored rationing, an unfamiliar concept today, in reading the novel, Stepping on the Cracks, which also serve as a springboard for discussions on the topic of homelessness. 

In an attempt to bring all these strands of learning together students took over the Tinkering Lab for a day and made chocolate cakes using a recipe that didn’t use eggs, butter, or milk.  These were then donated to a fundraiser for the Interfaith Hospitality Network, an organization dedicated to providing temporary housing and support for those who would otherwise be homeless. 

Engineering Students Prototype for VEX Robotics Competition

Most periods of the day, you will find GAs engineering and robotics team hunkered down in the maker space, tweaking designs and prototyping for this year's Vex Competition.  Faculty from different areas of the school with specialties in fields related to robotics work help students with their projects from design to coding, from building skills to test sessions.

Alum Talk to US Art Students About the 21st Century Work Place

Senior Experience Designer at Method in San Fran Shares the new space of work (which just happens to support all of our work in 21st Century skills). Below are the mission points of Method which just happen to be best practices for innovative work in career sectors and schools alike.

"We are collaborative: We work with you to frame the problem or opportunity space to ensure we are solving the right challenge. We are flexible and adaptive to fit your needs and context. We run projects with small, focused teams that integrate with clients and their customers throughout the design process, often co-creating with them in our studios in San Francisco, New York, and London.

We are insight driven: We gather and synthesize customer and market insight to inform the design process. We use a combination of data-driven quantitative research and market and consumer trend analysis with ethnography and user testing to provide design insights that help guide decision making.

We work iteratively: We believe that the best products and services are the ones that are shaped by the people who use them. We take time to understand the business challenge or opportunity, and then we work iteratively to test hypotheses and assumptions through prototypes and user research to continuously build and test the products and services we create.

We consider the big picture: No product or service exists in a vacuum—neither do we consider design in isolation of the overall brand experience. We consider the varying touch points and experiences a customer might have with a brand and ensure that any new interaction both fits and builds upon the overall customer need.

We deliver beautiful design: No matter what the ask, our dedication to the highest quality of craft remains constant, in both our thinking and the final work. We are dedicated to the details of design, delivering both beautiful form and function."

Third grade "Living the Mission" in The Beard Center

Marnie McDonald's third grade class visited the beard Center for Innovation where they developed their research projects on 1st Thanksgiving.  Click here to see a short video of the students in action.

Middle School Students Prototype Solar Ovens

Maker Activities in Upper School Bio Ethics

The Biology Honors students begin the year with a project exploring bioethical topics that are currently in the news. Student groups create a newspaper “Debate” page articulating the facts and opposing opinions. They also include a political cartoon and quotations from members of our diverse GA community.

Designer babies, hydrofracking, GMO’s, Animal testing are some of the topics that our students are wrestling with in class and as global citizens. 

Amanda Elefante of AWeber Shares Inspire Tech with Faculty

Lower School STEAM Project in the Maker Space

Students in Lauren Vanin's fifth grade class had Halloween fun in the maker space this week with a STEAM project making Pumpkin Catapults.  "This STEAM design challenge was created to give give students an opportunity to plan, design, test, and improve catapults using specific consumable materials." reports Vanin. Her students had this to say, "I know know what a 'maker mindset' is…….”

“We knew we had to design a structure that would shoot the pumpkin the furthest, so it took lots of experimenting to find the correct spoon height.” “Most of the time we spent improving our original design…..we want back to the drawing board a lot!” “It was fun measuring the distance of our shots”

“Next time I’m using the materials differently!” “The group whose catapult shot the furthest spent less time building and more time planning.  I’m doing that next time”

8th Grade Science Faculty Workshop New Curriculum in the BCI

US Student Entrepreneurs Hear from Root Stock Racing's Abby Perkiss

Abby Perkiss, History Professor at Kean University and co-founder of Root Stock Racing, an adventure race planning and community building not for profit located in the Philadelphia region met with students from the Entrepreneurship class to speak about the company, and her journey from passion to profit, and the power of building the right brand. Along with her husband,  GA upper school history teacher Brent Freedland,  Root Stock will begin to roll out their races in 2016.

Lower School / Upper School Tower Design Challenge

On September 25th the lower school and upper school collaborated on a design thinking project where they were instructed to imagine your team is proposing a GA Tower to be constructed on campus. Think Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Tower of London, Watts Tower in LA…
Envision the Tower as a celebration of Germantown Academy for all time.