First published in The Advisor(Westmoreland County, PA):
By: Jack Kovach
November 21, 2002
What comes to mind when you think of homework? Try to put the dreadful thought out of your mind and instead imagine being given a $400 budget with the assignment to purchase the best two bicycles you can find.
Such an assignment recently led two local teens to Bike Line of Greensburg. Jason Garner and James Kon used a Great Idea Grant provided by the Mon Valley Education Consortium to purchase two Trek brand mountain bikes. Trek is the Wisconsin manufacturer best known for building bikes for Lance Armstrong and the United States Postal Service Pro Cycling Team.
The unassembled bikes, in unopened cartons, were trucked back to Central Westmoreland Career & Technology Center in New Stanton. Inside the school's Drafting and Design lab two competing teams will have to put all the parts together. During the process they will also research answers to questions such as: What is tensile strength? Why does the seat angle vary for different kinds of bikes? What does "back to drawing board" really mean? In addition, 12 of the students participating in the project will receive college credit from California University of Pennsylvania for satisfactorily measuring and drawing many of the parts including chain links, cogs, and sprockets.
The project is a spin-off of a curriculum the Ford Motor Company developed for training their new employees. Technical schools across the country, including CWCTC, have either borrowed lessons from Ford's program or have adopted it entirely for teaching manufacturing processes.
After students complete the assembly process Bike Line's Technical Supervisor, Jeremy Holdorf, will perform the final safety inspection and validate the warranties. The project will culminate with the two teams competing against each other in one final showdown---a race. At the end of the school year the cycles will be awarded to the two students with the best grades and attendance records for the year.
The teacher and students wish to express their sincere gratitude to the Mon Valley Education Consortium, a private, non-profit, organization that works in 25 school districts in southwestern Pennsylvania.
To learn more about the Great Idea Grant program as well as other ways they are serving the community visit their web site at http://www.mvec.org
Excerpt From West Bloomfield Eccentric:
A new partnership with Ford Motor Company will jump-start the robotics, business and science curricula at West Bloomfield High School with a high-octane pilot program.
Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, particularly its Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies, is set to begin a partnership with the West Bloomfield School District for the 2003-04 school year. Its aim is multi-purpose, according to Joseph Hoffman, director of technology for the school district.
The pilot program will provide high school students with high-quality interdisciplinary learning experiences that challenge students academically and also develop their problem-solving, critical thinking and communications skills.
The Ford PAS program will begin with the existing robotics curriculum and filter into other programs. The program may be extended to middle school students in the future.
Ford will offer the engineering-based learning program and expand the learning environment through a relationship with the Ford Powertrain Division with field trips, mentoring programs, job shadowing opportunities, guest speakers and other activities. Teacher and administration training will also be provided.
"The advantage of this program is that it brings a real world environment into the classroom," said Hoffman. "The program packages real work skills, such as teamwork, marketing and problem solving skills and working in a global environment, into a 2-1/2 year program. By the time the students are done with it, they will be well equipped to go to college or enter the business world."