Author: nlewkowitz

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Toothbrush Update

A few days ago I wrote about how my wife’s Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush failed. The brush still turned on, so the battery was not an issue. After taking it apart I was able to discover it was a mechanical fault, a metal piece had sheared off making it so the head would no longer vibrate. 

I was able to locate a new piece on Ebay to replace the broken hardware and it was an easy install to replace the part. The toothbrush is now functioning properly again, and a $10 part has saved us $100+ dollars on replacing the electric toothbrush. 

A few pics of the replacement part and the broken part below. In the first picture on the right you can see the old part with the sheared off piece. The middle image shows the sheared off part with a metal attachment. A screw (not shown) goes through the attachment piece and through a part connected to the brush mechanism, and then screws into the captive nut on the sheared off part (you can see the bottom of the captive nut sticking out of this piece. The photo on the left shows the not tip assembly purchased from Ebay. You simply need to unscrew and then attach to the vibrating mechanism on the toothbrush. 

We may not be able to fix everything, but we should endeavor to fix what we can rather than throwing something away.

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Snow Day

We learned towards the end of the school day on Thursday that school on Friday would be cancelled due to inclement weather. It’s a funny thing, most teachers I know despise snow days, for they see it as taking away from their summer vacation (snow days are added on at the end of the year as meaningless half days of school). Students, on the other hand, rejoiced as they heard the news.

I spent the early part of the snow day shoveling out my car and our front yard. The snow was light and fluffy, and fairly easy to move around. We are fortunate to have a small garden area in the front of our house which serves as a place to dump snow from the sidewalk and our cars – not all houses on our street have such a high end luxury, and end up stacking snow between cars on the street. After about 45 minutes of shoveling, we had cleared everything pretty well, and the snow that fell after was not very substantial.

The rest of the day was spent working in my office and then some couch time with the chihuahuas. An early start to the weekend.

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Volume Control | Parametric Modeling

One of my favorite aspects of my job is solving a problem we have never before encountered. Luckily, this happens nearly every day as students are building various types of projects of their own design, such as candy shooters and singing toothbrushes. 

A senior was having problems building a box for a bluetooth speaker setup they were working on, as they were trying to understand how to build the box with the proper volume specified for the speakers he was using. He was taking measurements, putting them into CAD, but when things changed within his project, he would have to change all his dimensions again and it was a real tedious task. 

Working together we were able to solve the problem using parameters in Fusion 360. We utilize Fusion 360 for all our CAD needs in the classroom. It’s an easy to learn, robust software with built-in CAM that enables us to send our models to all the different machines we have in the shop – 3D printers, waterjet, plasma cutter, mills, lathes, etc. It’s also free software, and I have the ability to setup an educational account and give access to all my students, rather than having each student setup their own personal account. I really like the way they have the new educational account setup for teachers and students, makes life much easier than before where students needed to verify their accounts which was often problematic.

Back to the parameters discussion. By utilizing parameters in Fusion 360 along with an organized modeling strategy, we found a way to control the volume of the box so it always remains constant, even when we change the length, width, or size of material. Below is a screenshot of the parameter setup for the project. You’ll notice some odd math happening, as there are several instances of multiplying 1 in within an expression. This is because Fusion 360 does not have in² or in³ within its parameters framework, so you need to use the 1 in to cancel out parts of an expression so it has the same units Fusion 360 can work with. 

I went ahead and created a quick modeling video for students, so in the future I can just point them to the video instead of showing them directly, which frees me up to help other students in our classroom. Video below.

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Educational Philosophy

During the last few years of teaching at a vocational high school, I can’t recall ever being asked about my teaching philosophy. In fact, in my 10+ years of teaching, I don’t remember another administrator or even fellow teacher asking to describe my teaching philosophy. Because, of this, as you can imagine, I never put a lot of mental effort into working out just exactly what is my philosophy. Essentially, when hired, teachers are often given the keys to a classroom and expected to teach without much help or guidance.

My previous teaching job did not require a teaching license, however, now that I work in a public school, I’ve had to go through a rather tedious process of getting a teaching license – much harder I must say than the architecture license I have, which was quite difficult indeed. The vocational teaching license required necessitates at least 7 college level classes specific to teaching. During some, if not all, of these classes you are  asked about your teaching philosophy, and for me, this was the first time I’ve had to give the subject much thought. 

The other day, a former colleague and friend of mine wrote a short blog post about his teaching philosophy, and since I’ve always admired this teacher for his dedication to creating content and adaptation of new ideas, I wanted to see how his thoughts aligned with mine, and more importantly, what should be included in one’s teaching philosophy.

You can read his blog post regarding his teaching philosophy here, but one point I find most similar to my style of teaching is his paragraph on grading.

“I see feedback, not judgmental grading, as a key to unlocking a student’s willingness to adapt and improve. Grading without feedback turns education into a scavenger hunt for “points.” Feedback without grades primes a student’s growth mindset.”

I’ve never enjoyed grading, and as a project based teacher, my interest is in helping students complete projects and less about curriculum and lesson plans. I don’t tell students how to complete projects or expect specific types of projects from my students. I give guidance and feedback. Some projects are certainly better than others, but my hope is to encourage iteration in an effort to improve. I believe this is where my former colleague and I converge most in our educational philosophy.

Further on in his evolving piece, he writes:

“I am known for planning every minute, experimenting with educational technology, tantalizing students with my own enthusiasm for content, providing differentiated feedback, and embedding contemporary events into the curriculum in real time.”

I know my strengths and weaknesses, and planning every minute of a class day is just not how I like to teach. Better planning each day is certainly something I should inject more into my curriculum, it’s just something I’m not as good at implementing. My day to day in the classroom is more informed by seeing what issues/problems students are encountering with their work and then working out how to help them fix these issues. One difference between my friend’s work and mine, is my students tend to work on a variety of different projects, CAD, coding, plamsa cutting, 3d printing, lasercutting, milling, etc. My students are all having very different problems each day. 

His statement above does, however, hit home with me regarding his enthusiasm for content and sharing that with students. I could not agree more, whether or not students are interested in my passions, I try to share those things with students so they see I have passion for something. Hopefully, they will find something they feel strongly about. This is one reason why we let students choose their own projects. Often students try and choose projects they think I will like. My response to them is that they need to work on a project that excites them, it’s the only way they will do a good job, they must be invested in their work. 

I encourage you to read the full post from my friend, it offers some very good insights, and is a starting point for beginning to come up with your own educational philosophy. I’ve not written mine down yet, but in the next few weeks I expect to create a similar evolving document. 

All for now.

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Routine

With the new year only a few days old, it’s the time of year where we tend to establish new routines, or continue habits from the previous year(s). For today’s post, I thought it might be nice to briefly discuss my own daily work routine. While routines can vary and fluctuate over time, I rather enjoy my current schedule of events.

My alarm goes off at 5am each morning. I’m pretty good at getting up immediately, and never hit the snooze. I wake my Frenchie, Ferguson, and carry him to the bathroom and turn on the shower. Right now it’s winter, so I let the shower run a few minutes to heat the bathroom. I grab my clothes for the day, weigh myself, and then jump in the shower. I shave with a double edge razor and badger brush each morning. I take Ferguson down stairs after I’m dressed and change his diaper, clean his sleeping area, and give him some water and a snack. Because it’s winter, I turn the car on and let it warm up a few minutes while I complete getting ready inside the house. I grab my lunch, a water bottle, and a breakfast bar and place it into my bag. I then go upstairs and help Ash wake up the chihuahuas, they are slow to get ready for the day, and then say goodbye.

Generally, I leave the house by around 5:40am and drive to work. It takes between 10-15 minutes to travel to Medford, and there is little traffic at this time of day. After arriving at school I take off my coat, put on my apron, and sit at my computer. Usually I record a CAD or CAM video via Loom, or do other school related work until the bell rings at 7:40am. I take Advisory period attendance, and then have 1st period as a prep to continue to get ready for the day. Second and third periods we usually have our Freshmen, but only 4 out of every 6 days. For periods 4-6 we have the Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors who have decided to take Robotics and Engineering as a vocational class. We see the same students each day for all 3 periods, which allows us to work on long term projects.

School ends at 2:18, however, vocational faculty are required by contract to stay at school until 3pm. This is never a big deal, as I always have work to do after the school day, usually grading, posting attendance, and troubleshooting student projects. The drive home from school can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour, all based on Boston afternoon traffic. Generally, I am home around 4pm. I take the two chihuahuas out for a quick walk, and then change Ferguson’s diapers and clean up his area. Most days I then spend about an hour in the basement working out on the treadmill, before beginning to think about what to make for dinner. I’ll prep dinner so it’s ready to go when Ash comes home and then read the Boston Globe.

We eat dinner and watch some television, and by 9pm I’m in bed reading a book. I generally read a little bit each night, sometimes its 5-10 minutes other nights its nearly an hour, just depends. By 10pm I turn off the lights and go to sleep, and prepare to do it all again the next day.

Some images of student work from the day to finish off this post