As we were testing one of the prototypes in the gym one
of the young men had an idea. He knew it was the hot air that made these things
fly. He then thought that maybe they needed more of a contrast in air
temperatures and that might be best achieved outside rather than inside. This
seemed to make sense so we took the Chinese lantern outside where the air was a
little bit cooler and you can see the result of that test.
As you can see in the video it was a success and the boys
got the Chinese lantern up in the air. What I really like was the reaction they
had when they saw it work. It is very rarely you see young men such as these
have this kind of a reaction to something in school.
Thinking on this whole process of what the boys went
through with the failures in trial and error to get to the final product it
made me think about some things. First off, I respect the fact the boys didn't
give up. How many of our students would have given up after the first attempt
that nearly burned a hole in our gym floor? The other thing I think about is do
we provide students with enough chances and enough opportunities to fail and to
learn from their failure without judgment? Are they able to constantly fine
tune and change what they're doing. These boys were able to work through problems
and work different scenarios and settings and problems and solutions and figure
out what worked and ultimately succeed in the project. What you didn’t see in
the video was their changes to the size of the bag, the weight of the fire
starter and position of the “carriage”.
I am fairly confident that while the boys were super
happy with the final product of the floating lantern, I feel as though they
will appreciate it far greater by having failed and gone through that process
than if they had gotten it right the first time. I am left wondering if we
provide enough time and opportunities for students to fail and learn from it in
school.