Boss Levels at Quest to Learn

I had the good fortune of being invited to judge the Rube Goldberg Machines Challenge at the amazing and innovative Quest to Learn School. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the term, a “Rube Goldberg machine” is a device that’s designed to complete a simple task in a complex fashion. For this challenge, 6^th-graders teamed up to create simple machines that served different purposes – one opened a locker, another threw an object into the garbage. We visited seven classrooms and assessed the completed projects using rubrics. All the students did an outstanding job of demonstrating their knowledge of simple machines, kinetic and potential energy, and teamwork! I loved the way the students and their families responded to BrainPOP (thanks for the cheers!), and it was such an honor to serve as a judge alongside folks from Gigantic Mechanic and the New York Hall of Science, among others. Our service as judges included the spirited awards ceremony, where the winners of Best Overall Machine and Most Creative Machine were announced.  Thanks for including us, Quest to Learn!