Blake and Woodard headed a water testing program through the local Cooperative Extension offices. They held local meetings to explain likely sources of contamination, the nature of household water quality problems, and management practices that might reduce water contamination. Get them to build things, say Virginia Tech professors Jim LaPorte and Mark Sanders. Children have to see how math and science relate to real life if they are to become more interested in these subjects, say the technology education professors. They may also become more curious about the scientific or mathematical ideas behind the problem.
Student create their own solutions to technological problems.
For example, students are asked to design and construct a model of a better transportation device for transporting toxic materials that is pneumatically or hydraulically controlled by syringes and plastic tubes. After students have built their devices, either individually or in teams, the teacher can challenge them to further apply math and science principles, Sanders says. A study of antique books and their watermark labels by a Virginia Tech German professor may cause revisions to the accepted history of printing, including the chronology of the first German books printed using Johann Gutenberg's process of movable type. What he needs is a little help from his friends in the Virginia Tech Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics. Historians had put the publishing date for these editions at 1460.