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<\/a>A recently developed lesson plan involves students in the development of clothing that will keep highway maintenance workers safe by sensing when traffic is too close.<\/p><\/div>\n
From the initial set of lesson plans, the ideas have continued to evolve and grow. One of the plans most recently developed has students utilize e-textile fabrics with embedded sensors and actuators. In this exercise, students develop clothing that will keep highway maintenance workers safe by sensing when traffic is too close. In addition to getting the students to think about how close a vehicle can be to a person without putting them in danger, the activity provides experience assembling electronics, learning about how the sensors work, and programming the devices.<\/p>\n
Lesson plans were field tested through a STEM afterschool program serving middle school and high school students. Now in its third year, the program has reached many students, some of whom have returned year after year.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of our best success stories comes from one of the students who was with us for a couple of years, graduated from high school, and then, between graduating and going to college in the fall, worked for the Virginia Department of Transportation as a transportation engineer,\u201d said Claus. The graduate returned recently and talked to the kids in the afterschool program about his experiences. \u201cAfter he talked, enthusiasm among the students went up by a factor of ten. It just has more impact for a student to tell other students, than for an adult to tell them.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a>Sensors in the fabric to be used for highway worker clothing.<\/p><\/div>\n
Transportation is a good field for engaging with students of this age group, according to Christina Martin, who serves as the Giles County STEM Education Program Coordinator. \u201cStudents are excited about driving; it\u2019s something they can see themselves doing in a few years. It\u2019s fun for them to think about how vehicles are going to change. They see some of the connected applications that already exist on vehicles and they can start to imagine what that progression is going to look like in several years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It was through their interactions with local teachers that the NanoSonic engineers learned that most of the classrooms in the area did not have access to the Internet. \u201cThat floored us because we\u2019re engineers and nerds,\u201d said Claus. NanoSonic purchased inexpensive routers and installed them in the science classrooms in all the county schools they worked with. Today, perhaps in part because of this effort, all of the county schools now have wireless Internet throughout. \u201cWe think that\u2019s a nice benefit. Certainly, that wasn\u2019t FHWA\u2019s objective, but as a side benefit, we think we\u2019ve been able to move the county ahead a step or two.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company has also helped create a regional science fair, launched a Transportation Engineering Summer Camp, and initiated a summer work program for high schoolers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think it\u2019s our civic responsibility to be part of the community,\u201d said Claus. However, he does point out that the company has had one direct benefit from the work they have done with the schools. Through a summer work program for high school students, NanoSonic has hired one person as a full-time, permanent employee.<\/p>\n
To view and download the suite of free transportation lesson plans, visit the Education page of the NanoSonic website<\/a>.\u00a0 Questions related to the plans can be directed to STEM@nanosonic.com<\/a> .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Through a unique project, a suite of lesson plans teaching concepts from intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and connected vehicle technologies has been developed for middle school and high school students. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,25,29,40,43,65,72],"class_list":["post-2459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-success-stories","tag-career-awareness","tag-curriculum","tag-engineering","tag-k-12-education","tag-lessons","tag-stem","tag-technology-in-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtwc.cee.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtwc.cee.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtwc.cee.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtwc.cee.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtwc.cee.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mtwc.cee.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtwc.cee.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtwc.cee.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtwc.cee.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtwc.cee.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}