They just started to offer the project lead the way courses at my high school this year and i signed up for the first year course which is called intro to engineering. My teacher was pretty vague on what we were going to be doing mostly because he has no engineering background or knowledge. The origanal teacher the school hired to teach the course backed out so they got one of the computer teachers to teach it. Our project lead the way lab is also not finished yet so we have class in a computer room. I was just wondering if people who are in project lead the way classes in other schools could tell me what kinds of things you do and how you like the courses. This might also help my teacher to find out what other schools are doing.
thanks,
Ben Van Selous
this topic has been covered… but that thread seems pretty worn out so illl post here.
This is my 3rd year in PLTW. So far i have completed Introduction to Engineering Design, Digital Electronics, and currently am in Principles of Engineering and CIM. I love these clases, i think they are the best thing a high school could possibly offer.
ok so for the first year… hmm… you start off learning basic sketching skills, on paper. You learn all the methods of making sketches for your designs. Then you start working in Inventor. You learn all the features of the program first, then move on to making single parts, assemblys, and eventually assemblies with driving constraints so you can actually see moving parts (ex. our class made a model train set where the train moved around the track.)
ya, i love it what can i say.
I am currently attending Dillard High School which is in Ft. Lauderdale Florida… it is a magnet school. We have 6 different courses for robotics. I am almost through all of them… this is my senior year and i am finishing the last two courses now. I have gone through several projects. I dont know if i remember all of them but I can point out a few of them. There were soldering projects, When the teacher will give you a kit and you have to make it work (most of the time its a mini robot)… also past year we have done small version of every single years game…
we have done the stack attack and FIRST Frenzy… where you had to build a robot with legos. It was very intersting. There were also BoeBot competitions in the class. You can check out Parallax to find out about the game, rules and other stuff… past year i also have done a project which was called Hex Crawler… its a six legged robot… fully programmed. The courses requires you to learn how to design, doing calculations and also make models of parts for your design. There might have been a lot more interesting things that I have done in the class but right at this moment its not clicking… but i think thats some great projects that can be done in a robotics class… good luck… 
There are actually two similar threads on the topic of PLTW … they don’t seem that worn out to me!!
**Project Lead the Way! ** <-- General PLTW discussion.
Project Lead the Way? <-- Thread asking how many other teams/high schools have incorporated PLTW into their curriculum.
