Program+Overview

Challenge
At the first professional development meeting, you will be presented with the scenario for our year-end challenge event. Past examples include a search and salvage mission for recovery of a sunken ship, and disaster response and remediation of an underwater oil spill.

As teachers, your task is to work together with your students and with other school teams to develop technology to address this problem. Your team will not be able to resolve the simulation alone—you must work with other teams to coordinate your response. We encourage you to find ways to modify and redesign the basic Sea Perch ROV to accomplish your goals.

Our professional development meetings will provide you with classroom tools for engineering design, and serve as a forum for discussion of any issues that come up over the course of the year. The culminating event will include a simulation of this challenge at the MIT pool in the spring of 2012.

Sea Perch is a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, that can be built in the classroom and used as a hands-on tool to teach basic concepts from Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. The build takes about 10 hours and it is suggested that 3-4 students work together to build one vehicle.
 * The Basic Build: Sea Perch ROV **

More information about the Sea Perch ROV can be found at []. The Sea Perch ROV has been a proven teaching tool in the classroom for many years. For this program, a number of Sea Perch parts kits and instruction manuals will be provided to each school.

While we encourage new schools to use the Sea Perch ROV construction project as the foundation for their work, returning schools may consider more advanced Sea Perch ROV modifications or other ROV build projects.

In most cases, a basic Sea Perch ROV build will not be enough to accomplish the task that you and your students are interested in. You may need cameras, sensors, or other, more complex mechanical additions.
 * Creative Problem Solving and Engineering Design: **

These modifications and features should be designed and fabricated at least partially in the classroom, with student involvement. During our professional development meetings, we will provide information that will assist with the design and fabrication challenges that you may encounter.

Past examples of modifications include cutting and grabber arms to deal with debris, cameras to survey the situation and guide other ROV’s, and sensing equipment such as temperature or pressure probes.

The final event will be held in May at the MIT pool. The event will include a simulation of this year’s SPI challenge. School teams are responsible for transporting students to the event. Final date and details will be determined during the first professional development meetings, according to school schedules.
 * Sea Perch Institute Challenge Event 2012: **

Please bring your spring schedule to the first professional development meeting.