Bobcats Help Elementary Students Engineer Solutions to Novel Problems

Emma Carberry | May 29, 2019

As a partner in Texas State’s Bobcat Made makerspace, the Educational Technology program in the Curriculum and Instruction Department advocates for makerspaces as learning tools for students of all ages. Most recently, this advocacy has reached Oak Creek Elementary School in New Braunfels, TX. A partnership between the College of Education and the elementary school began last year when students in Texas State’s Makerspaces, Intersections of Art and Everything course assisted in implementing Oak Creek’s first-ever Bluebonnet Novel Engineering Day as a service-learning opportunity.

Bluebonnet Novel Engineering Day invites elementary students to participate in a full day engaging with the makerspace in their school library. Prior to the event, Oak Creek students are encouraged to read five or more Texas Bluebonnet Award-winning books. Then, on the day of event, students are asked to select a problem from their favorite book and spend the day creating novel solutions to a problem from that book.

For Novel Engineering Day’s second iteration this spring, even more Texas State students had the opportunity to participate. Along with four Educational Technology students, seven of Senior Lecturer Julia Meritt’s teacher education field-based blocks assisted with the event. Throughout the day, College of Education Bobcats supported the elementary students in designing, testing, improving and presenting their solutions.

“We all learned from each other as the students cooperatively collaborated to discuss, solve, design, engineer, create and share a prototype that was a group effort based on a book that they read,” shared school librarian Deborah DuCroz. She expressed her gratitude to Texas State faculty and students for making the second year of this event positive for everyone involved and emphasized the day’s benefits not only for the 73 Oak Creek students who participated, but all who were involved.