Handouts are available below.

Big Idea

Have you tried using ChatGPT to make a STEM project even more challenging – and since it’s more challenging, there will be more learning involved. Recently, I gave my students the aluminum foil boat challenge. It’s where they take some foil and create a boat that floats and holds up a bunch of pennies. It can be a bit of a simple activity since kids tend to create rafts, stack pennies on it, and then be done with it. Students often don’t go through several rounds of designing prototypes and testing them, which is where all the learning happens. Thus, I asked ChatGPT for help to create a stronger challenge that required students to build and test. More often than not, we see AI as a means of getting an answer to a question; but, this time, I was seeking to get AI to make the answer even more difficult to get to. The results were amazing.

Episode Notes

Three things I did to make my foil boat project even more challenging:

1. Providing building restrictions (ie. criteria) for students and ask ChatGPT for suggestions on building criteria.
   • For example, boats need to be at least 3 times longer than they are wide. Boats can only be made of tape and one sheet of foil that is 12 inches by 12 inches. And, boats must have a section or sections where marbles or pennies will not be stacked.
2. Give students performance goals to work towards.
   • For example, a boat that can hold up at least 20 marbles before sinking is Emerging (ie level 1); at least 45 marbles is Developing (2); at least 65 marbles is Proficient (3); at least 90 marbles is Extending (4).
3. Make it a requirement that students build and test at least 3 prototypes
   • Assign improvement marks between prototypes to assess growth between prototypes.

Resources

Handout(s): Ep81 Handouts – Using ChatGPT to Make a Better Foil Boat Project

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