One of the most valuable outcomes to come out of all of this S
TEM 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…
