PBS Design Squad Showcased at Cleveland’s Great Lakes Science Center

PBS’s Emmy Award winning teen reality show, Design Squad, made its first appearance yesterday at the Great Lakes Science Center. The show offered an open-house event with activity stations throughout the building where visitors had the opportunity to explore hands-on activities based on challenges that appear on the show. Design Squad’s host, Nate Ball, gave a presentation which revolved around a sneak preview of the upcoming season set to begin in January on Tuesdays at 7:30 pm on WVIZ/PBS.

According to an April 2008 PBS press release, “Design Squad was created in response to a national imperative to attract more young people to engineering studies and careers. Using a lively reality show/competition format, the series combines energy, enthusiasm, teamwork, and especially humor – to excite kids ages nine and up about engineering.” In each episode, high school and/or college-age students form two teams which are given a challenge to be completed in two days. Some of the challenges have included creating remote-controlled flying football targets for Hasbro and dry land dog sleds for the Jamaica Dog Sled Team. The final episode of each season presents the two top scorers competing in a final challenge for the Grand Prize: a $10,000 college scholarship from the Intel Foundation.

The Great Lakes Science Center event offered a glimpse into the upcoming episode “sNOw Problem.” In this episode, the Design Squad teams were challenged to design dry-land dog sleds for the world famous Jamaica Dog Sled Team. The two-part episode is available early online at: sNOw Problem. Design Squad host Nate Ball and Jamaican Dog Sled Team member Newton Marshall were on hand at the event to talk about the episodes, answer questions, show clips, and take photos with local children and families.

I had the opportunity to interview both Nate and Newton after the Design Squad presentation. They were friendly, personable, and extremely excited about the event, the show, and getting children interested in engineering.

The show’s host Nate Ball holds two Mechanical Engineering Degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning a B.S. in 2005 and a M.S. in 2007. However, he’s far from the outdated stereotype of a typical engineer as he was captain of the MIT Track-and-Field Team and was an All-American Pole-Vaulter and record holder at the university in both the indoor and outdoor arenas. He’s highly energetic and incredibly excited to expose children and teens to the field of engineering.

I had the chance to sit down with Nate, and I learned that engineering is simply finding ways to solve problems to help yourself and others. Nate says he didn’t know what the profession was until college when he took a Mechanical Engineering class and was instantly hooked. He says as a child his parents were extremely supportive of him and allowed him to drill holes in things and use tools at an early age, in a supportive environment. As a child he loved making things.
He says, “Fun for me on the weekends was a trip to the hardware store.”

When he was young he started out small by building forts from couch cushions or playing with Legos. By the time he was in fourth grade his projects got bigger and he built a kayak and a bottle rocket launcher. He credits his parents with encouraging his creativity by offering lots of support, but very little guidance. They let him figure everything out on his own.

He shared two of his many funny childhood invention stories with me one of which involved building an enormous box and digging an even bigger hole in which to maneuver the box to create an underground fort. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to place the box into the center of the hole as easily as he anticipated and it ended up sitting halfway in and halfway out of the hole for over a year-and-a-half before he dismantled it. The second story involved a tree stump, a six-foot post, and a working drawbridge complete with garden stakes for added décor. This was a big achievement considering his previous drawbridges only crossed small muddy moats he dug himself and weren’t as effective as he hoped.

I asked Nate what kids should do if they are interested in engineering and how parents can encourage their children’s creativity.

He said, “Give kids the tools to play and step back. Let them figure it out. Kids are going to get hurt banging their thumb with a hammer among other things, but they are robust and made to get banged up – that’s just life. So have band-aids on hand and always require safety glasses. Other than that just let them go.”

He suggested that if parents do want to be involved in the projects their children are working on to ask thoughtful questions. “Get your child asking why – why did or didn’t that work? Then let them discover the answers. Get them to really think about things on their own.”

Nate believes the Design Squad event and show exemplifies how engineering is something you can do right now to improve your life and the lives of others. He gave the example of trying to figure out how to fold laundry better or faster. He believes engineering applies to everything and allows for new challenges to be solved. In essence, Design Squad is a creative venue which introduces kids to the world of engineering.

I also had the opportunity to speak with one of Jamaica’s most celebrated athletes, dog sled racer Newton Marshall. At the presentation and through the sneak peeks of sNOw Problem, I learned that training to race dog sleds in Jamaica is obviously completely differently than the actual competition which takes place in the Yukon or Alaska. Not only is the weather significantly different, but the mechanics of the sled itself contrast one another. The grass-sled in Jamaica actually resembles a three-wheel bike therefore Newton slows and stops by using a handbrake, whereas the sled he uses in competition is designed with a foot-brake. The grass sled is steered by handlebars much like a bicycle, and the snow sled is maneuvered using body weight. The last crucial difference involves the dogs. The dogs he practices with in Jamaica are rescues dogs from the local pound. They are every size, shape and variety. When he competes in Alaska or the Yukon he uses Huskies only, as the dogs raised in Jamaica wouldn’t survive in the arctic conditions.

I asked Newton about the differences and how he can possibly feel prepared for an event when practice and competition conditions are so extreme and he agreed that it was very difficult, but he enjoyed the challenge. In fact this challenge was one of the reasons he became a client on Design Squad, to ask the teams to design a better grass sled – one that more closely replicates the snow sled. To see if the teams were successful, you’ll have to watch the episode in February or if you’re eager to know what happens now you can see it online here.

I also asked Newton how he became involved in dog sled racing in Jamaica, the most unlikely of places as he said in the presentation, “There has never been a drop of snow in Jamaica.”

Newton said he was introduced to it through his employer. He first started out with this employer as a gardener, then he transitioned to a horse-back riding guide. One day he was handpicked to look after dogs at Chukka Cove Farm, which soon became home to the Jamaican Dog Sled Team. Newton started worked with the dogs and the sleds and after years of training achieved his goal of competing in the Yukon Quest, a 1000 mile race which travels from Yukon, Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska. Not only did Newton place 13th in the race, but he received the Challenge of the North Award for persevering against all odds against him. He said the longest time he’s been on the sled is 12 hours straight and once while racing he was didn’t see another person for almost two weeks. Newton enjoys the competition of dog-sledding so much he is currently training to race in the Iditarod in March 2010.

I was very impressed by the entire Design Squad team at the Great Lakes Science Center, not only were they helpful and friendly, but they offered an informative presentation as well as thought-provoking activities throughout the Science Center that challenged kids to design and build a boat from simple materials that can hold a “payload” – 25 pennies – for at least 10 seconds before sinking, build a table eight inches tall out of rolled newspaper that can hold a heavy book, invent a way to send a ping pong ball flying high enough to catch it, and create a platform that can safely cushion “astronauts” when they land on a table.

We had a great time and will be visting the Great Lakes Science Center again soon. My kids just might be want to be engineers one day and what better place to encourage it?

How is your child a young engineer?

Thank you to the Great Lakes Science Center for providing my family with tickets to attend this event for review. No other compensation was received for this review.