Building a Biodome With Straws, Chickens, and Dignity
A chicken in a straw dome with the title "Building a Biodome"
My CCS intern, Marcus, and I pulled together content to teach a three-hour Sustainability In Science workshop. We wanted to cover three science and engineering-based topics. We chose testing pH, Understanding protein folding, and building a biodome. That turned out to be so much more than just a biodome, and the kids loved it!.
Not Everyone Is An Engineer
This guy gets it, he can build anything.
Engineering isn’t an art, until you need it to be. Of course it’s a science and requires skill and math, and understanding laws, statistics, and variables. There comes a point where engineering needs to cross that gap into the artistic. Some people can do that easily and I don’t think we reward them enough.
This was the second dome that we built in this workshop. This guy built both of them. He is methodical, patient, talented, and a good team player. He’s got skills. The most important of which is that he can work towards a vision and bring others with him. It was his idea to work the weakness of the color straw dome into the weakness of the white straw dome to create something stronger.
I wish it was as easy for the other kids to work together and build like this. It isn’t and that’s OK. That’s why Marcus and I chose three different topics to discuss in this workshop. The artistry is that when you keep the topics open but related many more topics just fell out.
Making Due With What You Have
This quiet student was not the team lead. The team lead was Jade. This team worked because the leader and the chief engineer worked with the other four members. They discovered where their strengths lay and guided them in that direction. This proves that while not everyone is an engineer, everyone has the capacity to lead.
Jade encouraged the non-engineers to explore different topics and find the chllenge that captured their imaginations. It was smart and it made the core team stronger. This strategy also lured other members from the other two teams to their side.
They created an open community of ideas that all found a home under that dome.That exploration will be coming up in the next blogpost.
