Hello fellow surveyors,
I am considering volunteering for an upcoming career day for my son's class. I'm sure there are plenty of you on here who have done this before and I wanted to get some ideas. These are 6th grade students so I don't want to get too technical with them. Some ideas that I was kicking around was taking a boundary and topo map and a subdivision plat and explaining to them the process of beginning to end product, like the house that they live in. I was also considering taking a robot and showing them how it works. I thought that would have kind of a cool factor to it.
I thank you in advance for any suggestions.
Take the topo map for show and tell. Stay away from long explanations. Tell them how much fun you have. The robot will be the big hit!
Joe
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Typing class 9th grade!
I did this once and wanted to give them the idea of how a map is made by mapping their classroom.
- Set up the robot.
- show them how it follows you to each corner of the room and take a shot there.
- Let them pass the prism & DC around the room.
- They each hit the shot button and type in there name.
- Download into your laptop, connect the four corners of the room.
- Each point shows up with their name on it!
- e-mail the drawing to the teacher to print it.
WOW, they will be amazed by the technology and remember the time they mapped their room.
I did it this way to keep the time short and stay inside, but maybe you could got out in Georgia?
Have fun and they will.
I like to start by asking them who likes:
History?
Math?
Reading?
Plants?
4-wheel drive vehicles?
Chainsaws?
Lasers?
Computers?
Machetes?
Geology?
They say “Well as surveyors, we deal with all of that stuff!”
Then you can get into a brief (and I mean brief) explanation on what we do. Keep in mind that they typically have an attention span of about a minute.
I also like to tell stories of what we find in the field (arrow heads, old cars, etc.). I have been known to show a map of a place they may know about (movie theater, strip-mall, etc.). I hand out 11x17 versions of the maps. Taking the robot and a schonstedt to show has been a great hit also.
All classes are different, so you need to play the room. One time I had about five (5) classes back to back on the same day. Every one of them went differently.
Miguel A. Escobar, LSLS, RPLS
Robot absolutely. But also bring an ordinary instrument (preferably a transit) that they can be hands on with, turn and "see" angles, focus and use the cross hairs. When I did this with my son's class they also enjoyed a sketch on the chalk board showing how we staked a curve from the PC using deflection angles.
Oh, and be sure to bring along a tape so they can see distances both marked with the tape and shot with the EDM.
Andy
Robot and walk around with it tracking you. Kids love that. Flashing guide lights and the Reflectorless Laser also seem to go down well when I've done it in the past.
If you can get it setup low enough, being able to 'Spy' on the building on the other side of the Sports fields was good too.
Thank you all for the suggestions. You gave me some really good ideas.
Thanks Again