One of the most valuable outcomes to come out of all of this STEM discussion is the amount of free, quality resources now available to encourage students in the maths and sciences. Our daughter and I have been enjoying one such program, a project-based engineering curriculum. As an introduction to each lesson, the authors continually reacquaint parent(s) and students with the Engineering Design Process. The process looks like this:
Identify–>Investigate–>Imagine–>Plan–>Create–>Test–>Improve–>Communicate
We start out beautifully with Identifying and Investigating. I give myself little credit for our successful beginnings; those aspects of the process are fairly straightforward, and are well-outlined by the instructions in the educator manual. It is the Imagine step that trips us up. I should correct that: the Imagine step trips me up. Read what happens next in my monthly contribution to The End in Mind…
