Past Projects

 

Teacher: Veronica Randall
School: Prairie View High School
Location: Henderson, Colorado USA

Project primarily focuses on research and development of biomedical innovations, as well as, career exploration for students. They will choose an innovation that has the potential for significant impacts on global health and highlighting it in a presentation. Students will also be researching a health care field or specific professions within medicine and considering what goals they need to set now to be successful in post secondary education and on into their career. Additionally we would ask that mentors be willing to assist students on a few of their regular curricular projects over the course with feedback on the quality and professionalism of their product. Medical Interventions (MI) allows students to investigate the variety of interventions involved in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease as they follow the lives of a fictitious family. The course will explore how to prevent and fight infection, how to screen and evaluate the code in our DNA, how to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer, and how to prevail when the organs of the body begin to fail. Through these scenarios students will be exposed to the wide range of interventions related to immunology, surgery, genetics, pharmacology, medical devices, and diagnostics. Lifestyle choices and preventive measures are emphasized throughout the course as well as the important role that scientific thinking and engineering design play in the development of interventions of the future.

Teacher: Jim Weber
School: Timberland
Location: Wentzville, Missouri USA

Engineering Design and Development (EDD) is the capstone course in the PLTW high school engineering program. It is an engineering research course in which students work in teams to design and develop an original solution to a valid open- ended technical problem by applying the engineering design process. The course applies and concurrently develops secondary level knowledge and skills in mathematics, science, and technology. Utilizing the activity- project- problem-based (APPB) teaching and learning pedagogy, students will perform research to choose, validate, and justify a technical problem. After carefully defining the problem, teams of students will design, build, and test their solution. Finally, student teams will present and defend their original solution to an outside panel. While progressing through the engineering design process, students will work closely with experts and will continually hone their organizational, communication and interpersonal skills, their creative and problem solving abilities, and their understanding of the design process. Engineering Design and Development is a high school level course that is appropriate for 12th grade students. Since the projects on which students work can vary with student interest and the curriculum focuses on problem solving, EDD is appropriate for students who are interested in any technical career path. EDD should be taken as the final capstone PLTW course since it requires application of the knowledge and skills from the PLTW foundation courses.

Teacher: Veronica Randall
School: Prairie View High School
Location: Henderson, Colorado USA

In this capstone course, students apply their knowledge and skills to answer questions or solve problems related to the biomedical sciences. Students design innovative solutions facing present day health issues as they work through progressively more difficult, open-ended problems, addressing topics such as clinical medicine, physiology, biomedical engineering, and public health. Students will have the opportunity to work on an independent project and will work with a mentor or adviser from a university, hospital, physician’s office, or industry as they work through that project. Throughout the course, students are expected to present their industry vetted work to an adult audience that may include representatives from the local business and healthcare community. Students will start by considering their unique interests and talents and how those can be developed to address a healthcare need. Their independent project will revolve around this specific need and will be incorporated as much as possible into the other 5 Problems we address. As an example, if a student is interested in the Career Option for their Independent Project with focus in Radiology then they could approach the other problems by: Problem 1 (Design Emergency Department with Innovation) he or she might focus on how radiology is used in emergency settings and designing more mobility of imaging equipment. Problem 2 (Physiological Experiments) he or she could design experiments around joint stress or bone strength Problem 3 (Medical Innovation) Designing new casting procedures or cancer treatments using radiology Problem 4 (Environmental Issues) Student could focus on processing of medical wastes Problem 5 ( Public Health Issues) Student might explore how to provide multiple prenatal screening options for at risk populations. Some Independent project ideas may not directly relate to the other problems we tackle, however students should try to approach solutions from that perspective as much as possible. The real goal is for the student to be an "expert" in their knowledge, understanding, and skills needed for the success of their Independent Project. Students will use skills learned from previous courses as well as the problems we work on this year to help them complete their Independent Project. All six of the problems are staged as missions – a unique set of tasks the students must work through to reach their desired objective. Working through the missions not only expose students to current issues in biomedical science, but it also provides skill-based instruction in research and experimentation – tools students will use to design innovative solutions to real-world problems.