Walk Along Gliders

To the Flite Test Community;

As FT STEM continues to grow, more and more teachers passionate about aviation and design thinking are now given the opportunity to collaborate and share with each other all the cool an exciting learning tools that are available for our students. This past week I was introduced to an awesome gentlemen named Slater Harrison of http://www.sciencetoymaker.org/. He has all sorts of cool cost effective projects that provide STEM learning opportunities for students of all ages. The project that he shared with the class and I was the Walk Along Gliders;

He handmade around twenty of these gliders and as soon as we started shooting this episode, all twenty were flying around the room with giant smiles on the students. The process of making them fly is fairly easy, create a barrier either by a flat board or by your hands and generate an upward lift of air to keep your glider flying. There was instant learning opportunities that came from this experiment expressed by the students,

What makes it float?
What makes my glider go right or left?
Why is the wire up towards the front?
Why does my glider go up and down?
What's with the leading edge of the glider?

These are all great questions and we were able to answer them and make connections through this simple glider. It was a joy to watch the students have fun, they probably could have done this all day if they could. By the end of the class they already started to get competitive and conduct competitions. Huge thanks to Slater for sharing this with our community and all the other teachers that we learned from since starting FT STEM. Stay tuned for more cool projects coming from FT STEM in the future, we have a big one planned!

Jaxon has got the technique down!