MSAE students benefitting from project-based learning curriculum

It might have seemed like a game: dropping insulated one-gallon plastic water bottles out of a second-story window onto the concrete patio below, but the 26 Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment students were actually learning.

The Defenestration project is part of the project- based learning curriculum practiced at the Maharishi School middle school. Students perform difficult real life challenges. They publish papers in English class, code computer applications in math class and do original scientific and historical research.

The Defenestration Project was the first one of the new school year. It served as a model for students to learn the process of project creation, refinement and documentation, and its purpose was to learn how the processes of drafting, feedback and testing are important parts of learning.

Monday?s defenestration test produced six students out of 26 who successfully computed mass and impact force from dropping an insulated one-gallon plastic bottle from a second-story window onto a concrete patio. Their insulation structures effectively protected the bottles from damage at impact.

Projects were graded on three different elements of the apparatus: design, weight, and success ? did it protect the water? The point scale took into account various levels of success from having an intact bottle to a cracked one, to leaking, to smashed. The grade involved design, construction, fault-tolerance and aesthetics.