Bethel Park students learn creative lighting with LED books
Senior Rachel Toogood shows off a light in her book, which she has dedicated to her dad.
Senior Colin Loughman works on his wiring.
The light shines in a student’s book.
Creative writing has become creative lighting in Bethel Park High School.
Students of Charles Youngs, Luke Modrak and Kent Wallisch have been working on a project with a certain glow: books with strategically placed light-emitting diodes for some extra oomph and extra educational opportunities.
“I don’t really know too much about electrical wiring,” freshman Edric Craven admitted, but then he proceeded to give an informed synopsis of how the LED books work.
“We have two different parts to the binding, one that the electricity goes through to get to the light, and one that comes back. We have to make sure they’re separated, or else the lights won’t turn on,” he said, showing what he’s learned about a new subject.
And that’s by design.
“It’s part of a larger plan in the school to involve students of all different classes in some sort of STEAM experience,” Youngs explained, “an experience that touches on two or more of the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, arts or mathematics.”
He learned about the educational value of paper circuitry – working with LED diodes, watch batteries and conductive copper tape – during a National Council of Teachers of English convention a few years ago. Since then, he’s been exploring possibilities.
“Toward the end of last year, with the creative writing class, I came up with a book project where they wrote a short poem and put it into an eight-page, accordion-fold book,” Youngs said.
This year, his idea was to have students sew conductive thread into the binding of books for the LED assignment.
“It’s a much more involved project because of figuring out what goes on what page, how those are bound together, and then the actual process of using binders to put the project together,” he said, “all the while thinking about the electricity to make sure the circuit is going to work.”
Aiding the project’s viability is some recently developed technology.
“A couple of years ago, an MIT student named Jie Qi created a diode that works like a little sticker,” Youngs explained. “And that makes it very handy for students to be able to take the stickers and place them on the copper tape, and have that be part of their circuit.”
He is teaching the bookcraft and circuitry aspects of the project. Wallisch is providing instruction on basic illustration techniques, and Modrak on composition.
They assigned their students to develop storyboards with illustrations and text for their books, with the theme of something that inspires them. Junior Katrina Janusek, for example, wrote about her three best friends.
“I feel like they’re a great light in my life,” she said.
With the holidays approaching, Youngs noted, many of the students intend their books as personalized gifts.
“When a piece of paper has some image or some text on it, and then you hit a button and something lights up, it makes a surprise,” he said. “It makes it fun and interesting, as well.”