"What Goes
Around, Comes Around"
by James T. Biehle, AIA
President,
INSIDE/OUT
ARCHITECTURE, INC.
In the early 1990's many middle and high schools began converting their industrial arts shops into "tech labs" in which the power tools, sawdust and grease of the vocational programs were replaced by computers, student work stations, and canned technology courseware. This was based on the rationalization that, since America is moving from an industrial economy to an information economy, the need to understand how computers can interface with a number of engineering and scientific disciplines is essential. Unfortunately, this converted modern, clean, high tech space remained in the industrial arts portion of the building, usually far away from the cleaner, quieter, academic areas.
different "hands-on"things. Strangely, school administrators often failed to make the connection between these popular tech labs and their science programs. They failed to see that the tech lab programs were applied science and that a logical connection between the theory taught in the classroom and the hands on nature of the tech lab should be encouraged.
The National Science Education Standards, published in 1996, suggests that inquiry-based. hands-on science teaching is a national science education goal. Educators have been saying for
went on to work for NASA, a robot which we entered in the local science fair. My father provided the tools and much of the materials and occasional guidance in how to use a tool or make a particular electrical connection; but, for the most part, the concepts and the solutions were mine. I learned by doing and took that knowledge forward into my career as an architect.
The new science standards suggest a science education model much different from the "cookbook" approach in which the teacher walks
|
PROJECTS |
PUBLICATIONS |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
