The “Aha” Moment in Adult Education Trends

The Aha moment for myself when reading the two different articles on adult education trends has to do with Game-based learning. I never thought of education as necessarily something that could be made to be fun or enjoyable. When I went to school, it always felt like something that I had to do more than something I wanted to do. As an adult, my opinion of education has changed to something I now want to do and more importantly realize its something that employers require from their employees.

When I read different articles on Game-based learning I realized that this form of adult education is not just for the classroom,  but now commonly used by companies to get more productivity and competitiveness out of their employees. This type of learning happens without the participants even being aware that it is happening. Learning can happen simply by participating. The use of cell phones and tablets has become so mainstream that these games can be continually updated live. This allows for continual participation whether you are a competitive person or not. The more enjoyable a company is to work for, the better their employee retention will become.

Implications to Trends in Adult Education

The two trends that my partner and I chose were Game-based learning (GBL) and Project-based learning (PBL).

I incorporated game based learning this year into my classroom. I currently use it on days when my students look exhausted or overwhelmed. If they have had a couple of exams that day in other classes, I try to break the day up by playing Kahoot. On the last day of class before exams,  I have made the day optional for my students. The ones that choose to attend class that day play Kahoot,  for a chance to have their name on a Bryan Baeumler bobble head toy I have.  I take a picture of the student,in front of the overhead screen, with their name and score holding the bobblehead. They really get into it and it makes for an enjoyable time for the students to learn but also to compete against each other.

Project based learning is one in which I would like to do more of over the coming years. Currently my students have a cooler/freezer project they must wire, start and set all of the operational parameters to keep running properly. They are marked as group work and for the most part I hear nothing but good comments on the experience. I need to incorporate more of the other days when we currently have lectures into more hands on projects. My goal is to not lecture in this class in the future, but to have a different project that covers each skill set that the government requires from my apprenticeship students. I have five intakes per school year and my goal is to incorporate at least one new project based learning assignment into that class per year. If it doesn’t work properly at first, I will have four other intakes to perfect it before introducing another new one to the course.

Game-based Learning and Trends

I chose game based learning as the trend in adult education that I thought was most innovative and interesting. Game based learning is an exercise or task that incorporates a gaming type system of rewards and incentives to make learning interesting and competitive amongst your students. Game based learning works for visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners.

My partner chose Project-based learning as her trend that was most exciting to her in adult education. Project based learning is not a new technology and has been around for centuries. Learning through experience has been an acknowledged way of adult learning. The important aspects to Project-based learning is that the project must first have a question that is motivates the students and secondly the students must come up with a meaningful answer to that question. This trend definitely affects my students at S.A.I.T,  completing a project is a big part of their learning.

 

 

Game Based Learning Trends

I decided to write about game-based learning or as some sites refer to as gamification. Here is the link to the article I read on the topic, https://elearningindustry.com/game-based-learning-and-adult-learning-style\p

The three parts of assignment 2, for my foundations of adult education blog can be found in my Adult Learning section. The article discusses the trend, it’s implications and the Aha moment I felt upon reading the article.

My partner decided to do her assignment on Project-based learning (PBL). The link to the article she read on the topic is, http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/project-based-learning-benefits-best-practices.shtml

Power Generating RTU

Every time I do research on a new HVAC technology I get excited, but at the same time I worry about the future of a refrigeration technician.  The bulk of my 4 years of schooling at SAIT was learning about refrigerant pressures, temperatures, condensers, evaporators and compressors. This new technology by the company BeCool could put guys like me out of work, especially ones that live in the southern hemisphere with high humidity and warm winters.

The new BeCool RTU doesn’t need refrigerant a condenser or an evaporator. It doesn’t need a compressor to move refrigerant or oil to operate. What it does have are three heat exchangers. HMX heat exchangers are cross-flow plate type exchangers. The first one is used to dehumidify the air, second one is an indirect evaporative cooler for cooling the dry air and the third one which is a natural gas regenerator that produces electricity.

The RTU draws process air into the first heat exchanger. The first exchanger dehumidifies the air using a high concentration of a salt solution, liquid desiccant . The desiccant dehumidifies the air by absorbing the water out of the air.  This absorption process creates heat that is added to the entering air. This hot dry air now requires cooling.  Water and outdoor air are passed over the HMX heat exchanger to cool the air. The water, outdoor air and  process air are not mixed. The process air is now warm and dry but needs further cooling. The process air enters an HMX evaporative cooler. Water is added once again to the evaporative cooler to cool the warm dry air. The continual flow of strong desiccant solution and a water source are the keys to this system. To keep the strong desiccant regenerating, a natural gas fuel cell regenerator is required. This fuel cell enables desiccant regeneration and creates electricity from the burning of the natural gas. The only two by-products are heat and water which are reused.

If you have a cheap source for natural gas, live in a warm humid climate, need power generated, then this technology when it hits the market in 2017 might be worth looking into.

 

 

 

HFO’s, Where’s Mulder and Scully when you need them?

As mysterious as the X files and UFO’s has been the information regarding the new generation of refrigerants known as HFO’s. The chemical name is hydrofluoroolefins and they are possibly the replacement for HFC’s. When I first heard of a new refrigerant, I immediately assumed it was designed as a safer refrigerant with low GWP (Global warming potential) and low ODP (Ozone depletion potential). Each article I read confuses me more as too the validity of the manufacture’s claims. The company Chemours manufacture’s the new HFO-1234yf refrigerant. Chemours is a chemical manufacturer that is part of the larger DuPont company.

Chemours claims that HFO-1234yf is 99.7% better than R-134a Refrigerant for its GWP. Since most vehicles manufactured in the United States and Canada currently use R-134a, this would be a significant improvement. The company claims that this product is not only better for its GWP potential for cars, it also improves upon the vehicles fuel efficiencies. The air conditioning system is lighter and more efficient so it will save you on fuel that would be needed on a heavier system such as CO2. Chemours

DuPont is the same company that invented Freon and were heavy investors in General Motors in its early infancy. Chemours refrigerant manufacturing division is now involved in both the refrigerant and automobile industries with HFO-1234yf. An article I recently read online that was written by a natural refrigerant manufacturer, Engas has a different viewpoint on HFO’s versus Natural refrigerants.  In it they reference the group Greenpeace and what they think about the new refrigerant. Greenpeace states that the refrigerant is not an improvement over the previous HFC refrigerants in automobiles. They claim the new refrigerant is nothing more than an HFC with a different more polished name. They claim that the risk of human safety should be of concern to all of us. The new refrigerant if leaks has been known to start an engine fire which produces hydrogen fluoride and carbonyl halides which are toxic and potentially lethal.

Fox Mulder and Scully might be able to solve this mystery but for now let’s hope that this isn’t another cover up.

 

Ductwork of the future?

When you think you’ve seen it all, along comes a product that could change an industry. The new product is called Gatorduct, and it’s completely manufactured from a type of cardboard called Tri-Wall. This cardboard is coated with a special Gatorskin which is fire retardant, moisture resistant and water repellent. The cardboard surface can be coloured and have graphics printed on it. The product is 80% lighter than sheet-metal, ships flat and is easy to assembly with nothing more than a jigsaw to cut it. The biggest selling feature will obviously be the lower cost for the contractor in ease of install and product cost. The product is 100% recyclable and currently made from 21.5% recycled material. The company manufactures in the U.K but is currently seeking UL approval in North America. Once the product is approved, the next step will be looking for someone to distribute it.

RTU Hybrid

Everywhere you look people are talking about hybrid cars, hybrid classrooms, hybrid diets and now a hybrid roof top unit or RTU. A company called Ice Energys have developed a hybrid cooling unit that works with a standard RTU. The RTU works as a standard cooling unit during non peak electrical periods of the day and the “Ice Bear” unit works with it during the peak electrical periods of the day. The RTU unit has an extra cooling coil added to it for the “Ice Bear”. At night the “Ice Bear” compressor starts and freezes the unit much like a giant ice cube tray. When the ice section is frozen solid, the compressor turns off. In the afternoon during peak electricity periods, a pump turns on inside the “Ice Bear” and the compressor in the RTU unit turns off. The pump moves cold refrigerant over to the extra cooling coil inside the RTU and provides cooling until the ice is completely depleted from the “Ice Bear”. At this point in time, the RTU compressor will start again if cooling is still required. Watch this YouTube video, Thermal energy storage to see the unit in operation.

While this isn’t a new idea, it certainly is a new product. I worked on a similar system on a high rise in downtown Calgary. The three chillers in the building would only run once the tanks of frozen ice had been depleted. At night, one or two chillers would run until the tanks were frozen and then shut off. In the morning the building automation system would have a cooling demand call and would start the  building pumps. The pumps would circulate water through the tanks cooling the water off to be delivered to cooling fan coils. When a certain percentage of ice was depleted from the tanks, one of the chillers would start, when a second set percentage of ice was depleted a second chiller would start and the same for the third chiller.

This is a fantastic idea but is unlikely to gain any traction in Alberta unless energy companies start charging different electricity rates for different times of the day. If we switch to the way other provinces providers charge for Time-Of-Use, such as hydro one in Ontario currently does, this could be an affordable option.

 

Geofence, what type of a fence is it?

Smartphones, smart-TV’s, smart cars and now even thermostats are all smart technologies. The days of thermostats only maintaining one temperature are long gone. We want thermostats to not only help us maintain our room humidity and temperature, we also want them to maintain different temperatures when we are home and away.  I started reading about all the new Wi-Fi thermostats available to the homeowner and realized that the choice isn’t just Honeywell or White Rogers anymore, it’s ecobee, Nest, Venstar,  or Sensi. There are many more but these are the big names currently in the market.

Two of the brands, Nest and Ecobee use sensors on the thermostat which can override the temperature settings when they sense movement. The thermostats adapt and learn your schedule and in theory will adjust your temperature up or down based on whether you are home or not.

Honeywell chose to not use sensors on their new models. They have added geofencing abilities to their thermostats.Geofence Instead of using sensors on the thermostat to determine if you are in the home or not, they use your cell phone to determine where you are. You can set a geofence distance away from your home in which you want the thermostat to change its settings. The thermostat knows that if I set my fence to 500′ and I’m 3 kms away, it will be in Away mode. It’s a brilliant idea since most of us carry our phones with us everywhere we go.

 

Polyethylene Refrigerant Piping

Say it isn’t so, plastic piping for refrigeration and air conditioning. Well I guess copper has officially become too expensive when refrigeration piping starts to switch to plastic. The company called Multi-flex has designed refrigerant piping up to 1  1/8″ that is light and almost zero coefficient of thermal expansion. The piping can be bent and is good from temperatures of -40ºF to 200ºF or ( -40ºC to 93.33ºC). Multi-flex pipe has a working pressure of 650 psig and a life span of 50 years. That shouldn’t be a problem since most equipment have a lifespan half of that. The company even offers a 25 year warranty. Multi-flex Pipe.

The pros seem to outweigh any negatives that I can come up with. The product is light, easy to handle, strong and has next to zero expansion issues. So is it the future of the HVAC/R industry? I’m not so sure. It’s going to be an easy sell to a contractor because it’s easy to use and quick to install.

Change isn’t easy to most, and this one will be even harder. As an HVAC/R mechanic, all I’ve ever worked with is copper. I trust it, I’m familiar with it and know it’s limitations. There’s something about lighting that acetylene torch that makes me feel like a refrigeration mechanic. Taking that away will help my hearing, but will likely take something away from that feeling of accomplishment, that feeling that I built that. Oh well, change will happen whether I like it or not, and this product from the outside looks to good to fail.