Seventh grade students at the Putnam Avenue Upper School are participating in NetPals. They have been penning emails to professionals in the fields of Science and Engineering. The professionals work at three different sites. They different places are MIT, Volpe, and Pegasystems. The students have the opportunity to talk with these individuals and gather insight into their professional careers. The adults have the opportunity to learn from the students about their lives and their work at school. The opportunity is fulfilling for all those involved.
During the time at Volpe, professionals showed airplane collisions with the goal in mind to make trains safer. They crash trains and then make observations to improve the design in the case of a crash. At MIT students designed their own paper aircraft and used a machine for launching in order to see which would fly the furthest.
Afterwards, students talked with Netpals based on different interests over lunch. Seventh graders will see their Netpals again in May 2016.