Cindy Seckel, Jermaine White, James Crawley, Iasha Lee, and Donald Amis

The team’s innovative teaching idea, “Ages of Simple Machines,” focuses on studying the Medieval Era and the use of machinery during this time period. With the Voya grant, students at Bates Middle School will construct simple medieval machines using interactive simulations that power inquiry and understanding, requiring students to graph, measure, compare, predict and prove. They will investigate and create "smart", modern day programmable machines. New connections will be made across the curriculum and the ages as the simple machines of the past are shown to relate to the "smart" machines of today. The knowledge learned through the program will provide a greater understanding of how things work, provide a foundation for design mechanisms and teach the principles of mechanical design.