On Tuesday (April 4) evening, Grade 7 students at RancheView School displayed how they would solve Cochrane's infrastructure problems.

Bridges, overpasses, underpassses, and pedestrian walkways were identified as areas of concerns for the grade 7 class. The project took about a month to complete in terms of identifying a problem area, coming up with a solution, and putting the touches on the final design.

Elisa Korver, Grade 7 teacher, says as part of the Alberta Education Science Curriculum the students were to cover structures and forces including bridges and bridge construction; she felt it was the perfect opportunity for students to explore authentic, real world solutions to problems they could identify with.

"Most of them are very familiar with the traffic problems in Cochrane and so we decided to look at ways we could solve some of those traffic issues."

Korver was pleasantly surprised to see how engaged the students became in this hands on project, identifying problems she never thought of herself. "From their perspective, those were areas that were problematic moving around Cochrane. And then when they built the bridges, some of bridges just astounded me with the detail and the attention to the aesthetics of the bridge, trying to keep in mind Cochrane's western feel and western heritage and tried to incorporate that into their designs."

A member of fire services and Town of Cochrane, Senior Manager of Development Services,  Drew Hyndman went to speak with the students to give them background information to help the students build the right type of structures from a safety and construction standpoint. Korver, adds Hyndman even offered up an opportunity for some of the students to present their ideas to Town Council in the near future.

The biggest benefit of this whole project is offering students an opportunity to really connect with what their learning.

"Out of the book sometimes is hard to put  into reality when it's hands on they encounter dilemmas maybe they didn't see and they realize it's difficult. Sometimes you have to problem solve, sometimes it doesn't work out the way you thought it would work out; so building that resiliency and that out of the box thinking certainly develops so many different areas of their learning."