RAFT Hands-On Education

What do math and music have in common?  Numbers tell us a lot about music! Math explains why notes sound higher than others, why instruments look the way they  are, and why some sounds are more pleasing to the ear than others. Math and music  are universal languages and use patterns to convey meaning! On November 3rd, at this year’s Marion Cilker Conference at SJSU, RAFT’s  Education Team’s Jeanne Lazzarini and Dianne Hurvitz co-presented “Harmonizing  with STEAM Standards” on that very subject in front of enthusiastic SJSU students!  Participants tackled a Design Challenge creating music collaboratively out of recycled  materials and making connections with mathematics! This challenge also introduced  other opportunities for cross-disciplinary STEAM lessons in literature, technology,  engineering, and science! How can you generate curiosity about music and math Watch this fantastic YouTube video with your students : Landfill Harmon...

When I first walked into my ' Perspectives in Assistive Technology ' class at Stanford , I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know much about assistive technology, except for what I’ve learned growing up with my younger autistic brother, and I didn’t have much experience designing in the field. However, what I did know was my goal for the class: to design a device that would allow children with autism, like my brother, to communicate. Through the RAFT project - to design an affordable, hands-on educational activity kit for children with disabilities - I was able to pursue that goal, while simultaneously gaining experience as a designer. At the end of the eight weeks, I came up with the ‘Spin a story’ Activity Kit, using RAFT materials, that provides several simple ways for students to express themselves. A mixture of three activities – sequencing, storyboarding and sorting – the kit encourages students to initiate their own thoughts with a variety of textual and visu...

3D Tessellation model A bespectacled 6th grader enthusiastically explains ‘efficiency of 3D space tessellations’ with myriad equations and handmade tessellation patterns to address the needs of the packaging, storing, shipping and construction industry. Another middle school student, was inspired by his little brother’s telescope and built a simple vacuum chamber using a PVC pipe with a microphone and a speaker on both ends to find out how sound travels on Mars! This 8th grader from Granada Islamic School used an oscilloscope his mother found at an auction to measure the sounds. “I poke around and find junk to build my projects. It’s fun.” Science projects today have become fun for many students as they use more hands on activities to experiment and understand concepts. These two middle school students were among 996 participants at the recent Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship , where RAFT was one of the special judges. Moenes Iskarous, President, S...