ExploraVision: Where the Rubber Meets the Road
Lizzie Oakley, PhD., Merion Mercy Academy, Merion Station, PA
The first day that the Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision project is introduced in class there’s some excitement. Most students remember an elementary school project that involves creating an “invention,” and there is some freedom in just letting your imagination run wild to think about hovering cars or robot vacuums for oil spills.
The first day we brainstorm. What is a problem that you would like to solve with technology? We start the projects so early in our school year and they’ve only known each other for a few weeks so there is some hesitation to speak in front of the class. Eventually we have enough ideas to group ourselves into teams based on broader interests (health, climate change, accessibility, transportation, energy). And then the rubber meets the road.
Over the next few weeks, we start hammering out our ideas and researching the possibilities. Some of us reach dead ends in seeing that our technology already exists. But can we make it better? Is there a way to improve it? The first test is “Shark Tank Day,” when each group presents their technology to the class and is subject to honest and sometimes brutal feedback on their plan. New paths are examined, and some designs withstand the trial and move forward with peer validation.
After ensuring we have a solid foundation, the next hurdle is researching the actual scientific principles involved in our chosen technology. We learn to use databases and access peer-reviewed articles, and we discover that collaborating on one Google document for one project has its challenges (as does teamwork in general). Since our midterm exams are in January, we finish the papers a month before the due date and celebrate with winter break and a party when we return to class. We wait.
This has been the journey for my year 9 honors biology freshmen for four years. Every year the project bonds the group members together through the shared obstacle of figuring it out themselves. When I ask seniors who I had in class 3 years ago, they all still remember their projects and stand behind their technology. There is also a certain reaction I get of “Oh that was so hard, I don’t even want to think about it!” For many of my students, this is their first time working meaningfully in collaboration, critiquing and receiving feedback from their peers, conducting research and writing a paper, and arguing for something of their own design and creation. To be doing all of this while also navigating a new environment and trying to identify a friend group is a tall order.
In 2021, I participated as a coach for the first year at Merion Mercy Academy because the previous science teacher had always had the students participate. I learned recently that the school has been participating since at least 1995! We didn’t get much feedback the first couple of years, but I admittedly took some time to figure out the scope of winning projects and the level of detail required in the scientific reasoning. The third year we received one honorable mention, and it felt like we had arrived.
To learn more about the 2025-26 ExploraVision program, visit https://www.exploravision.org