Wisconsin Sea Grant educators have come up with a new tool for middle-school teachers and students to use. All it takes is a coat hanger, water and some thought.
The Remotely Operated Vehicle engineering pack, or ROVe pack for short, has students building underwater ROVs in teams with hangers, and figuring out how to keep them underwater with the correct neutral buoyancy. The coat hanger ROV design was first developed by Harry Bohm at the Marine Advance Technology Education Center and Wisconsin Sea Grant Education Specialist Kathy Kline used it to develop a neutral buoyance activity for outreach events.
However, the pack itself is the brainchild of Lynn Kurth, a science teacher for Prairie River Middle School in Merrill, Wisconsin, along with Water Librarian Anne Moser and Kline. The only resource of its kind in the country, the pack contains a build-your-own ROV kit, an inflatable pool and a teacher’s guide. All teachers need to provide is water for the pool.
“What’s neat about the pack is that it focuses on the E of STEM, the engineering part,” said Moser. (STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.) “Teachers don’t have access to a lot of engineering curricula that they can use.”
Kurth has been using the pack in her classroom to teach her students next-generation engineering principles.
“I have my students’ full attention the minute they see the swimming pool filled with water and the small motors that are part of the engineering design process,” said Kurth. “In addition to the hands-on engineering activities, students work teogether using the technology to learn about the history of ROVs and how they can be used.”
Phase two of the project is already planned. Kline said it will involve use of the Trident, a new ROV produced by the company OpenROV. This phase will have a separate curriculum, and will require access to a pool or a pond.
Moser, Kline and Kurth will present the project at the Wisconsin Association for Environmental Education Conference, which begins on October 19 in Mequon, Wisconsin.
Wisconsin residents can borrow an ROVe Pack for free from the Wisconsin Water Library at UW-Madison. The pack will be delivered to a local library via the Library Delivery Network of Wisconsin. When phase two of the project is complete, the Trident will also be available for checkout.
The ROVe Packs were created by Wisconsin Sea Grant as part of a grant from the Wisconsin Environmental Education Board. For more information, visit go.wisc.edu/ROVe.
