Technology and the Diversity of Limits

Students have been working as a team throughout this activity. Now, they should take time to work individually to reflect on their work.

1. In this activity, you thought a lot about the details of your team’s design. How do you think that effort will help you in the next stage of the process of technology design, carrying out the solution?

   Students should realize that once they have a detailed plan, they will be able to quickly build the product during the next stage. Although the current stage took a lot of time, they should not have questions about the design during the next activity. They also should not have to spend time considering many new ideas.

2. Answer the following questions about designing the rubric.

   1. How do you think the rubric helped improve the design?

      Rubrics help people think specifically about the characteristics that the design will need to meet. They also help clearly define what makes the solution successful and whether it is the best product it can be.

   2. For an activity other than technology design, how else might a rubric be useful?

      Students may come up with different ideas. Teachers often use rubrics to grade large projects. Rubrics might also be useful in deciding the winner of a contest in which many aspects are required to win.

3. In this activity, you had several chances to go back to an earlier stage in the process of technology design (figure 4-8). If you did not think the design would work well, you could go back to the stage of coming up with ideas to solve the problem. What do you think this means about the process of technology design?

   Students should realize that the process of technology design is not a strictly linear process where people do each stage only once. It is a fluid process that allows people to revisit their ideas and plans often to make sure they are designing the best solution they can. This is important for engineers, as they need to make sure they have the most successful design possible. If they realize at some point that they might not have a successful plan, they need to be able to revisit earlier stages and change their ideas.

4. This activity included several steps in which you worked with other people.

   1. List two ways you think your team is working well together.

      Students may list different ideas, such as “listening to each other well,” “sharing responsibilities,” “letting each person work on tasks that represent his or her strengths,” or “making sure each person adds ideas to discussions.” Other ideas are acceptable as well.

   2. List two ways you think your team can improve the way it will work together in the next two activities.

      Students will have different ideas. They may have realized that one person is doing more work or that one person’s ideas are not being heard. Other ideas are acceptable as well.

   3. Describe how the class discussion in Step 11 in this activity helped your team’s design.

      Hopefully, the class asked good questions and helped teams come up with new ideas that would improve the designs. Students should realize that Step 11 was a time of constructive critiquing rather than a time to “attack” teams about their designs.