Fusion 10

Fusion MKIV, the fourth iteration of our Grade 10 STEM cohort, is off to a very quick start this year! After getting to know each other and learning the basics of design thinking back in June at our retreat, we jumped into a very public design challenge at the Vancouver Maker Faire on the weekend.  With the prompt, "How might we design an object that would significantly improve the visitor experience at Science World," the boys had two hours to interview visitors and come up with some kind of solution to the problem.  They used available materials and tools to build a prototype to demonstrate that solution. And check out the cool LED name tags that they're wearing in the photo below. Somehow, in the first week of school, we also found time to learn how to solder and make these!

After each team was done, they had time to wander the exhibits and get a look at what other people make and hopefully fuel their thinking about the kinds of things that they will want to create over the year and different ways of making things in general.

Throughout the year, all of the boys will be writing their own blogs documenting their progress and thinking.  Many of the posts will be assigned to them but I'm hoping that many posts will also simply be ways of documenting things that are important to them.  I encourage you to follow along and comment as you read.  You can find links to each of their blogs in the right sidebar under "My Blog List." Writing blog posts can be a lonely business and the interaction with others about what the students are thinking about will be encouraging and hopefully give them useful feedback on the concepts they are working with or their process.

OK, so the intent was to blog every day, but that was clearly an unrealistic goal.  I got caught up in the day to day busyness of our time in Waterloo and reading the students reflections on their own blogs.  This post is more about final reflections on the trip and the students themselves with some more photos from the trip.
I have to say that this was one of the most enjoyable year-end Fusion trips to date, at least for me.  This group of students is the most positive and curious groups that we have had yet.  Fusion, and especially the year-end trip can be hard in terms of engaging 100% of the students 100% of the time.  Each student joins the cohort for different reasons, has different interests, and wants something different from their experience.  When one student is deep into 3D printing technologies, another might be more interested chemistry and work in material science.  Yet another is taking Fusion because they recognize that there is something in the STEM fields that is of interest to them, but they don't have a clue what that is.  Each and every activity we do in the year has the potential to excite and bore different students at different times.  The boys in this year's Fusion cohort are, as a group, curious enough about everything that they engage with every activity with a positive attitude and a willingness to explore how the idea being presented might apply to their interests and passions.
This group also fully embraces the idea of iterating, especially when it comes to the design of the Fusion cohort itself.  I have rarely had as many insightful conversations with students about how Fusion could further be improved, conversations that start with "What if?" and "How might we?"  I truly get the sense that this group not only enjoyed their time in Fusion, but are invested in making the cohort even better for future students.  For this, I am very grateful.
While the year is not yet done, we are certainly down to the home stretch.  Watch the student blogs for their final posts and a reworking of their space to develop a full portfolio of their learning for the year.

The last few days have been busy with all sorts of fun and activity.  So much so, in fact that I've gotten behind in writing my blog posts!  Apologies for that.  This post will fill in some blanks and provide some images and video.  Hopefully, you've been keeping up with the student blog posts and keeping up with us all and getting more detail.

One of the highlights for many of the boys was the trip to the 3D Printing labs.  Unlike the way we tend to use 3D Printers at St George's to make things, the purpose of this approximately $50,000,000 group of labs is to study 3D Printing technology.  While the primary material that we use is plastic, here at Waterloo, they're particularly interested in printing in metals.  They want to know if there are more cost effective types of metals to print with and how strong the end result of printing using different methods of printing in metal can be.  Some methods of metal 3D Printing are capable of producing custom metal parts that are significantly stronger than other forms of metal part production.

Another project that the boys spent a fair amount of time on was in building virtual worlds and then testing them by uploading them to a VR gaming console so that they can step into the world that they have created.  Some of the worlds that were created were detailed and truly amazing! 

Friday afternoon was the Fusion students' opportunity to present their personal projects to a number of Masters, Doctoral, Post-Doc, Faculty, and industry experts.  Each student sat down with 3 different mentors for 15 minutes each.  While the reaction was certainly not universal, I will say that I've never seen so many excited students coming out of their meetings filled with feedback and ideas for future improvements.  The mentors then were able to sit down over dinner with the boys for more casual conversations about engineering, industry, university life, and I'm sure, many other things.  Some of the boys commented that this informal conversation was even more productive than the formal meetings. 

Saturday morning gave the boys a chance to use electrical current and chemistry to change titanium rings to different colours.  They then took apart single cylinder engines and put them back together.  While they seemed to be successful and one group got through the activity in record time, I'm fairly confident that I don't want any of them doing repairs on my car (at least not for a few years!)

A final session on the personal projects put experts on business and networking in front of the group to look at ways of taking their personal projects the next step.  If the ideas that they have been working on are ones that they would like to take beyond their Fusion year, they now have some ideas on how they might connect with people and funding that might allow them to take that next step. 

Evenings are always scheduled with some fun activity.  While the first night was spent learning to juggle, the second and third nights involved playing Humans vs Zombies (essentially tag using Nerf dart guns) and going on a wild Goose Chase (a scavenger hunt that is monitored and run via social media). 

Enjoy the photos.  The last video on this page is in 360VR, so if you have a VR unit of some sort (Google Cardboard, Merge, Oculus, HTC Vive, etc) then you can step inside the lab that we did our engine dissection in and join in the activity!

Today seemed to be all about keeping multiple balls in the air.  We started the day with an introduction to our program coordinators and then launched into a ball challenge that involved passing a soccer ball between every member of Fusion in under 10 seconds.  But, of course, there are rules around how the ball may get passed that make this a much more complicated problem than it might seem!


The day was very much hands and brains on following this initial challenge and asked the boys to solve problems from stopping the spread of major diseases to finally achieving perfect customer satisfaction at Starbucks.  They were introduced to two different longer term projects, one involving virtual worlds that they will be able to actually move around in when uploaded to computers at a virtual reality arcade in a few days and the other involving defining and creating value in a project that will unfurl through our entire visit to the University.

They also were challenged to build some sort of contraption (with limited supplies) that would guide a table tennis ball through a "simple" maze.














And in the spirit of keeping those balls in the air, they ended the day learning to juggle with varying degrees of success and hilarity.  Start looking toward the boys' blogs Thursday night when their first required blog post is due.  Hopefully you'll get much more detail and perspective surrounding their experience!

While not a terribly exciting day, Fusion MK3 has now landed at the University of Waterloo.  The boys were very effective at napping on planes, busses and in airports.  Once we landed and get settled in our dorms, we had a great walking tour of the campus and a pizza dinner.  The boys are now relaxing before hitting the hay a little on the early side.  Here are a couple of pictures of our day.