Directions for Book Blogging

Welcome to our summer book blog! Unlike most blogs that have one blogger- everyone gets to blog about the book, To Engineer is Human, and share ideas about K-12 engineering education and the "human side" of engineering. To reply to a post, click on Comments at the bottom of the post. To start a new post, click on New Post at the top right. However, to start a new post you have to have a Google account. If you don't want to register on Google, you can send me the text for your post and a title, and I will post it for you.

Who do we have on the blog? Our book blog consists of 16 high school teachers, 1 middle school teacher, 7 elementary teachers, 4 faculty or engineering students from the University of Maine, 3 MMSA staff, and 2 DOE staff. We have a diverse and well-rounded book group which should lead to some interesting conversations. One thing to remember- the most recent post is always at the top of the blog. If you haven't been on for awhile, scroll down and work backwards.

If you start a new post you also have the option of adding photos or other graphics as well as making a hyperlink. Play around with it a bit to get to know how it works. Try a test post- you can always delete it afterwards. Also, you will notice we will build a collection of links listed on the right. Since only the person (Page) with the Google account can add these, if you have any you would like to share, just send them to me at pagekeeley@gmail.com and I will post them for you. This is the first time we have ever tried this as a blog, so we're all getting our feet wet. Don't hesitate to wade right in!

Monday, August 6, 2012

Curiosity...

It seemed fitting that Curiosity's successful landing on the surface of Mars late last evening coincides with the close of our book blog.  (In case you missed it, here is an artistic rendering of the final decent and landing of the rover on the surface.)  What stood out for me in the video was listening to the engineers and scientists talk about what problems they had to identify and consider solutions for getting the device successfully on Mars.  To me, the clip captured the synergy between science and engineering.  Seems like this clip has classroom use potential - any thoughts? 

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5 comments:

  1. Dawn MarieAugust 7, 2012 at 5:54 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Dawn MarieAugust 7, 2012 at 6:00 AM

    Lynn my thoughts regarding learning opportunities in relation to Curiosity are in the post that I sent to Page for posting on the 5th. However today, I saw it was not entered, so I tried again on my side, and the glitch was gone.
    We were without access to news for the past few days and were delighted to find all was well with Curiosity.
    How wonderful this was successful, an engineering olympic feat. Perhaps colonizing on Mars will be next. If so, there will be lots of opportunities for engineering, Martian style.

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  3. AnonymousAugust 7, 2012 at 7:08 AM

    Think of how much "Good Press" NASA could get byhaving their "Mohawk Guy" post this picture.

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  4. Judy KaberAugust 7, 2012 at 1:51 PM

    Yes, the problems were a clear part of the clip. The other thing that this clip could be used for with students is to emphasize the importance of collaboration. After reading Petroski and reading the comments from our engineers, one big question I had with this is: how did they test their prototypes? Did they rely mostly on computer models? How did they imitate the Martian environment here on Earth to do the testing needed with prototypes? That cable system was cool!

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  5. Judy KaberAugust 7, 2012 at 1:52 PM

    Oh - I also meant to publish this link which has educational items relating to the Phoenix mission:

    http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/education.php

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