Internet Activity Center

SWE INTERNET ACTIVITY CENTER

Executive Summary:

The SWE Internet Activity Center contains web-based educational materials and an infrastructure to enhance SWE’s resources through its Internet site (www.swe.org). Web-based engineering lessons and hands-on student activities have been developed in the areas of aeronautical, aerospace, and mechanical engineering. Designed for young women (grades 5-8 or higher), the materials meet the National Science Standards. In addition, an on-line guide book has been designed to advise professionals how to share engineering with young students and how to develop “kid-safe” activities from readily available, inexpensive materials. Additional prototype web pages have been created to provide the infrastructure to support future sections such as: the history of women in engineering, interviews with women engineers and other Society members, and web chats.

Narrative Description:

The engineering educational materials and Internet presence supports the Society’s education, visibility, diversity and resource strategic priorities. Specifically:

• Education: The student materials are designed to teach young women prerequisite and basic engineering skills in an exciting, supportive and challenging manner. The Engineer’s Guide provides Society members and other web visitors instructions and examples on developing hands-on activities to support the recruitment of future women engineers.

• Diversity - The educational materials showcase individuals of diverse ethnic backgrounds as models.

• Resources - The educational materials created through this funding increase the tangible resources (products) available to the Society to meet its education and diversity goals. Web-based resources provide a scaleable means of access and distribution.

• Visibility - The Internet-based materials and presence provide a scaleable solution (one-time cost), supporting exposure and accessibility of the Society’s work to members, the technical community, and the general public world-wide.

Measured Results:

A statistical package was to have been added to the web site as part of the original project plan. Currently, there is some difficulty in applying some sort of package or counter to the existing pages. As soon as the difficulty can be overcome, an analysis of the site’s popularity will be available.

Publicity:

An announcement about the Internet Activity Center will be made on the SWE home page. In addition, an article about the site will be published in the MAL newsletter. Keywords such as engineering, women, experiments, aerodynamics, mechanical, aerospace, education, activities, lesson, plans, science, and guide have been added to HotBot, Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Alta Vista, Infoseek, Northern Lights, AOL Netfind and WEBCRAWLER search engines to connect with the IAC main page.

Description of Deliverables:

Supported by an ExxonMobile Education Foundation grant, web-based engineering lessons and hands-on activities are available for students, SWE members, parents, educators, scout-leaders or anyone with a desire to interest girls in engineering. Currently focused on aeronautical, aerospace and mechanical engineering, the lessons (http://www.swe.org/iac/LP) are designed for young women (grades 5-8 and above) and adhere to National Science Standards. Basic engineering skills (drafting, usage of tools, deductive skills and the scientific method) are embedded in these educational materials. Armed with a computer connection, anyone can access the materials!

Each activity includes: grade appropriate background material on the science or engineering subject, a list of materials, instructions for the activity, graphics (such as patterns to be cut-out, photos or animations demonstrating the experiment or final product), the National Science Standard the activity supports and new vocabulary. Each lesson plan can be downloaded for classroom or lab use, or it can be accessed by a class or group on-line. Materials requires for demonstrations are common, everyday objects that are easy to acquire.

If the lesson is being accessed on-line, a fun interactive activity or quiz checks the student’s knowledge of the subject. Can you calculate the thrust to launch a virtual rocket? If you weigh 100 pounds on Mars how much will you weigh on Saturn? Learn to use the “mechanical advantage” of a pulley to lift weights. “If at first you don’t succeed, try again” is a common motto - some activities randomly create new math problems for students to solve.

In addition, an on-line guide book (http://www.swe.org/iac/EG) advises professionals on how to share engineering with young students and develop “kid-safe” activities from readily available, inexpensive materials. To help you plan your classroom presentation the guide book outlines student dexterity skills, math abilities and science knowledge by grade. A section addressing questions older students might ask about engineering and college programs is also included.

Prototype pages have also been designed for possible expansion of the activity center (http://www.swe.org/iac/PP - not available to the public). These pages could include: the history of women in engineering, web chats with SWE members, and biographies of women engineers.

Lessons Learned:

No real problems or changes to the original project plan were encountered, except for the difficulty with the statistical package. Since SWE is undergoing a remodeling of their web site, this did cause some timing difficulties with page development and the statistics package.

Budget and Actuals:

Cislunar Aerospace, Inc.:

(Non-SWE)

Pallis Development - 120 hours @ 50/hour 6,000

C. Okamoto Graphics - 163.75 hours @ 40/hour 6,550

K. Okamoto Animations - 23 hours @ 37.5/hour 863

Chattot Graphics - 1 Hour @ 34/hour 34

Peterson HTML support - 4 Hours @ 13.75/hour 55

Total 13,502

Plus 44% Overhead 5,941

Software Adobe Photoshop 5.5 180

Total 19,623

SWE 9,000

Cislunar Contr. 10,623

SWE Member:

Dougherty Administration - 20 hours @ 50/hour 1,000

Development - 60 hours @ 50/hour 3,000

Total 4,000

SWE 0

SWE member Contr. 4,000

Project Title: SWE Internet Activity Center Date: May 16, 2000

Project Manager: F. Carroll Dougherty Section: MAL - Region D

Email: doughert@jaguar1.usouthal.edu Phone: (334) 460-7458

Deliverables: Indicate type (i.e. document, web page, brochure, etc.), title, and media (hard copy, email file, disk, etc.)

web pages: www.swe.org/iac

Select the one primary Strategic Priorty this project addressed:
Education

SWE Committees to which this report and deliverables would be of interest: