Tech Exploration

Some of you have heard about the CFBISD Education Foundation Grant, awarded to Technology Exploration at Blalack last Spring. The Grants is called the TOPS project. The Grant will support Technology Exploration curriculums on 3 or 4 middle school campuses, with a dynamic physical science project. If have not heard about the TOPS project, let me tell you about the opportunities we will have for your students. But first, allow me to explain why the district has decided to emphasize physical science at the middle school level.

TOPS stands for Targets (of) opportunity Physical Science. The TOPS project is one that seeks to emphasize and reinforce physical science, as our students learn and experience earth and life science in 7th, 8th and 9th grades.  We believe that the science of the physical and evident world must be understood before understanding the science of things not physical or evident. This is because the analogies and comparisons we use to teach come from the physical and evident world. Without understandable analogous and comparative examples, teachers will not be able to be as effective working with such a diverse student population.

The TOPS project call for the building of 4 large scale Trebuchets (or catapults) this fall. At the same time, we will begin development of a computer based tutorials for our CFBISD middle schools. This work is being done at Newman Smith High school. High school Technology Students are playing to a design and mass production role. This coordinated effort will result in a new and improved 'Trebuchet Target Trails" unit that has been conducted at Blalack and at some of the other Middle Schools, over the past two years.

This unit teaches how to assemble, operate and adjust a (simple machine and device) system. The assembly is done in small scale, while the operation and adjustment is done with a large scale machine outside. We have created a link to this website that will show you what we have done over the past two years.

Continue to encourage your students to focus on the units we have in the mean time. We know that our students have many different learning styles, motives and expectations. The new and improved "Trebuchet Target Trials" is a unit that will teach the entire cross section of students, since it is "hands on" and has depth for the science and mathematics minded student. It will even teach and reinforce the history of invention and how such inventions shaped the world.