Let’s Get Started!

1. Welcome to the Ranch – registration • Wanted: Content Experts – content knowledge survey • Saloon – picturing engineering & technology • OK (state) Corral – computer assessment • Happy Trails – Select two pictures: one that represents engineering and one that doesn’t Let’s Get Started! Visit all 5 Registration Stations, and locate your team’s table.

2. Welcome to the OSU ImprovingTeacher Quality Institute Pasha Antonenko, Ed Tech Rebecca Damron, English Jean Dockers, Science Karen High, Engineering Gayla Hudson, Education Alonzo Peterson, Math Susan Stansberry, Ed Tech/Library

4. Survey of Enacted Curriculum • If you have not already done this, please see Linda Goeller this afternoon! • Registration Station Assessments • Content Knowledge Survey • Video and Task Sheets • During activities we will be randomly video taping and filling out task sheets regarding design processes. Assessments

5. What is Engineering? • Boston Museum of Science • What is technology • What is engineering • Tools are available on line that you can use for your students.

7. What is technology? • “…the diverse collection of processes and knowledge that people use to extend human abilities and to satisfy human needs and wants” (ITEA, 2000) • “In the broadest sense, technology extends our abilities to change the world… We use technology to try to change the world to suit us better.” (AAAS, 1989) Collected by Cathy Lachapelle and Christine Cunningham Boston Museum of Science

9. What is Engineering? • An engineer is “a person who is trained in and uses technological and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems”. Engineers “are the innovators and designers”. (ITEA 2000) • Engineers are problem solvers who search for quicker, better, and less expensive ways to use the forces and materials of nature to meet today’s challenges.” (ASEE website) • “Engineers solve problems by applying scientific principles to practical ends.” (AAAS Benchmarks, p. 48) Lachapelle and Cunningham

10. Picturing Engineering • Select two pictures: • One that represents engineering • One that is not engineering • As an individual, write in your journal about why you selected the pictures you did • As a team classify the pictures into those that represent engineering and those that are not engineering • As a team, select one picture that best represents engineering • Select a team representative to share

11. Technology Science Scientists Investigate the natural world Technologies the products and processes created by engineers Society Values Needs Environment Economy Engineers Create the designed world Scientific Knowledge what scientists have learned about the natural world Adapted from Lachapelle and Cunningham

12. Improved Student Integrated, Learning Team- Taught Problem-Based Learning Curricula Engineering Activities

13. How do students conceptualize technology? • products, not processes (deVries 1996) • modern or new (deVries 1996, Cunningham, Lachapelle, & Lindgren-Streicher 2006, Solomonidou & Tassios 2007) • powered, especially by electricity (Cunningham, Lachapelle, & Lindgren-Streicher 2006, Solomonidou & Tassios 2007) Lachapelle and Cunningham

14. How do students conceptualize engineering? • engineers fix things (especially buildings, cars, electrical things, or engines) • engineers build things (especially buildings or electrical things) Lachapelle and Cunningham

15. Students’ conceptions are: • Rooted in activities that focus on construction, building, machinery, and vehicles. • Based on the products, not the type of work engineers do. • Children associate “engineering” with only a few engineering fields. These include: • Civil engineering • Computer engineering • Electrical engineering Lachapelle and Cunningham

16. The World without Engineers http://www.g9toengineering.com/activities/worldwithouteng.htm

23. Engineering Design www.adventureengineering.org

24. Inquiry in Design Engagement Evaluation and Communication Exploration Application Explanation Adventure Engineering

25. PBL places students in the active role of problem-solvers confronted with an ill-structured problem which mirrors real-world problems. PBL simultaneously develops problem solving strategies, disciplinary knowledge bases, and skills. Curriculum as Experience: Learner-centered Coherent & relevant Whole-to-part organization Teaching as facilitating Learning as constructing Flexible Environment Problem Based Learning

26. What do I know about this? What is the problem? How can we model this? What solutions are possible? What are the evaluative criteria? What do we need to know? Who will collect the information? Where will I find the information? Is the information useful/reliable? How can I teach my group? What can they teach me? How to apply my new knowledge? What documentation is needed? What similar problems can I solve? Understanding the Problem Learning Solving

27. INTEGRATING CURRICULA Marion Brady Howard Brady Center for Integrated Curricula

28. OUR STUDENTS ARE FACED WITH AN AVALANCHE OF INFORMATION: The quantity of information grows geometrically… Framework

29. FOR EXAMPLE • A survey of four popular eighth-grade textbooks identified 1,465 concepts thought by the authors to be important and difficult enough to include in their glossaries. • Doctors report that students are developing back problems from the weight of textbooks in their backpacks. Framework

30. THE THEORY SEEMS TO BE “If you throw enough mud on the wall, some of it is bound to stick.” Framework

31. BUT… There’s a problem. Framework Much of what’s “taught” and “learned” (at great cost in time and money) is soon forgotten.

32. WHY? WHAT’S WRONG? • Maybe the basic assumption is wrong, that “educated” means merely “having a lot of information in mental storage.” • Shouldn’t “educated” mean, “able to make more sense of self, of others, of the world, of experience, of life?” Framework

33. MAKING MORE SENSE OF LIFE? “Making more sense of life” means making more sense of immediate experience, more sense of the real world, right here, right now. It means making more sense, say, of buying a pair of socks. Framework

34. MAKING MORE SENSE OF LIFE: We want a pair of socks. Those available have been knitted in a third world country. Framework

35. MAKING SENSE OF LIFE: Power to run the knitting machines is supplied by burning fossil fuels: Framework

36. MAKING SENSE OF LIFE: Burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming. Framework

37. MAKING SENSE OF LIFE: Global warming alters weather patterns. Framework

38. MAKING SENSE OF LIFE: Altered weather patterns trigger environmental catastrophes. Framework

39. MAKING SENSE OF LIFE: Environmental catastrophes destroy infrastructure. Framework

40. MAKING SENSE OF LIFE: Money spent for infrastructure replacement isn’t available for health care. Framework

41. MAKING SENSE OF LIFE: Declines in the quality of health care affect mortality rates. Framework

42. MAKING SENSE OF LIFE: Mortality is a matter of life and death. Framework

43. MAKING SENSE OF LIFE: Buying socks, then, is a matter of life and death. Framework

44. THE PROBLEM? Buying a pair of socks is simple. Ordinary. Routine. But making sense of it (which is what education is supposed to help us do) turns out to require, at the very least, some understanding of marketing, physics, chemistry, meteorology, economics, engineering, psychology, sociology, political science, anthropology… Framework

45. THE PROBLEM: …And it requires an understanding of the relationships between these fields of knowledge. Framework

46. THE PROBLEM: Making sense of experience requires the seamless weaving together of knowledge. Fields of study are now walled off from each other with awkward, artificial, arbitrary boundaries. Because of this, our brains are denied, in real and immediate ways, access to the raw materials essential for productive, creative thought. Framework

47. IT’S A REAL PROBLEM. “It is a well-known scandal that our whole educational system is geared more to categorizing and analyzing patches of knowledge than to threading them together.” (Harlan Cleveland) “Students rarely have an opportunity to discover what one set of ideas has to do with another.” (Philip Sabaratta) “Our educational systems…are now primarily designed to teach people specialized knowledge—to enable students to divide and dissect knowledge. At the heart of this pattern of teaching is…a view of the world that is quite simply false.” (James Coomer) Framework

48. “All of our experience should have made it clear by now that faculty and students will not derive from a list of disjointed courses a coherent curriculum revealing the necessary interdependence of knowledge.” (Daniel Tanner) “The division into subjects and periods encourages a segmented rather than an integrated view of knowledge. Consequently, what students are asked to relate to in schooling becomes increasingly artificial, cut off from the human experiences subject matter is supposed to reflect.” (John I. Goodlad) Framework

49. INTEGRATING CURRICULA The boundaries between school subjects are barriers to understanding. We propose to integrate curricula by building, in students’ minds, a unifying and organizing framework for all knowledge. Framework

50. THIS MENTAL FRAMEWORK WILL ALLOW STUDENTS TO: • Identify relevant information • Establish relative levels of significance • Place data in context • Find relationships between various pieces of information • Tie everything together to make sense of complex reality. Framework