Technology and the Diversity of Limits

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    Chapter 4

    Masters of Design Chapter Overview

    • Doing Technology
    • Module Overview
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    Figure 4-1: Each of these people has a disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act makes it illegal to discriminate against anyone with a disability.

    In 1990, the U.S. Congress enacted a law called the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This law made it illegal to discriminate against any person with a disability. A disability is any kind of condition that limits what a person can do. It might be a physical condition or a mental condition. Each person in figure 4-1 has a disability.

    The ADA applies to many different parts of life. The ADA states that people with disabilities have the same rights as people without disabilities, whether they are looking for a job or getting an education. Sometimes people with disabilities need special equipment or extra time to complete tasks. This law ensures that the equipment or time is provided. The ADA also sets guidelines about buildings, such as schools or stores. The guidelines apply to new buildings as well as buildings that are being remodeled. The guidelines make sure that people with disabilities can easily enter the buildings and move around in them. These are just a few of the areas that the ADA addresses.

    Goals for the Chapter

    By the end of this chapter, you will

    • complete the entire process of technology design
    • understand how criteria and constraints affected the design
    • describe the human factors that played a role in the design
    • present the design to others
    • appreciate how technology can help people with disabilities.

    In Chapter 4, “Masters of Design,” you will use everything you have learned in the last three chapters. You will be working to design a technology solution for someone with a disability. You will go through the whole process of technology design. You will consider criteria and constraints, including human factors. You will test your design. Then, you will evaluate how your solution worked and share your results.

    Chapter Overview

    Chapter 4, “Masters of Design,” is the capstone for this module, Technology and the Diversity of Limits, as students will complete an entire cycle of the process of technology design, as shown in figure T4-1. They will use the information they have learned in chapters 1–3 to design a product for a person with a disability. Each activity is dedicated to completing one or two stages of the process of technology design. Students will work in the same teams of three throughout the chapter.

    Figure 4-1
    Figure T4-1: The process of technology design. As students work through this chapter, they will complete an entire cycle of the process of technology design.

    In the Engage activity, What’s the Problem?, students will identify the problem for which they will design a solution. This is the first stage in the process of technology design. They will use a checklist of some Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines to help them consider difficulties people with disabilities might face when completing everyday tasks. Students then will choose a disability to focus on and a problem they would like to solve. In the Explore activity, Brainstorming, students will spend time thinking of as many ideas to solve the problem as they can. This represents the second stage in the process.

    During the Explain activity, Designing the Solution, students will work out a detailed design for a product. This represents the third stage of the process—designing a solution. They will create a rubric to evaluate the product and design tests to run on the product. The Elaborate activity, Will It Work?, allows students to create the product. This is the fourth stage of the process of technology design—carrying out the solution. In the Evaluate activity, Let Me Tell You About …, students will complete the last two stages of the process by evaluating the solution and sharing the results with the class. They will think about the strengths and weaknesses of the product and present their work from the chapter to the rest of the class.

    Prerequisite Knowledge

    Before beginning this chapter, students should remember everything they learned in the “Doing Technology” chapter and Chapters 1–3. They will need to be comfortable with designing and carrying out procedures for a fair test.

    Commonly Held Misconceptions

    Students may harbor misconceptions about the material they will study in this chapter. Some of these misconceptions are listed in this section. Do not take time to go through them as a list of lecture topics for your students, but rather use them to inform your teaching as they emerge. Many activities included in this chapter work to expose misconceptions and help students develop better mental models.

    Several of the misconceptions from previous chapters are applicable in this capstone chapter as students apply their knowledge. Although many students may have changed their ideas, they may still have some of the following misconceptions:

    • Human factors are limited or relate only to preferences. Students may think of human factors as “what appeals to people.” For example, when students were studying paper towels in Chapter 3, “Testing Your Way to a Solution,” attractiveness was one criterion for the paper towels. Students should realize that human factors also relate to physical, mental, and behavioral characteristics. Many of these factors are beyond the control of humans, such as hand size or muscle strength. For a product to be used, it needs to fit any constraints that the target consumer might have.

    • People who are physically disabled are not able to do many tasks. The extent of this misconception will depend on your students’ experience with people who are physically disabled. Some students may think that people who have physical disabilities are not able to do many tasks, whereas other students may realize that often there are few limitations. Technology can help expand the limits of people who are physically disabled. For example, some people with limited use of their legs are able to drive using a hand control on the steering wheel. This design expands the limits to allow people with limited use of their legs to drive. Diversity in designs can also help people who are physically disabled.

    • Personal experiences can always serve as evidence. Many students, particularly those in middle school, think that personal experiences they have had or have heard about secondhand can be considered evidence to support an idea or a hypothesis. Although personal experiences may sometimes be used as evidence, they may also be very subjective. Students should realize that information that results from fair testing and experimentation is evidence that can be used to support ideas and theories. Sometimes students continue to present personal experiences in place of evidence from testing and experiments. This seems to occur because the evidence is in conflict with their beliefs. You should make an effort to emphasize the importance of using evidence from tests to support claims.

    • The point of testing is to see cause-and-effect relationships. In science, it is often the case that testing helps scientists determine the relationship between items. In engineering, the point of testing is to produce the best possible outcome. Testing helps engineers maximize their results and create a reliable design for their products. Often, this engineering way of thinking is easier for middle school students to understand than the scientific reasons for conducting testing. Students should understand that experimentation is guided by particular ideas and that doing an experiment is a way to test the ideas.

    • Conducting an experiment one time provides enough information about an idea. Students often think that if they see something one time in an experiment, then it is the “right” answer. They should realize that repeating an experiment provides more evidence to prove a particular idea. The more times an experiment is conducted, the more confident the experimenter will be that he or she is obtaining reliable results. Of course, the number of times an experiment is repeated must be tempered by the amount of time and money it takes to conduct the experiment. Students should be aware than one sample is not sufficient.

    Advance Preparation for the Chapter

    For most activities in this chapter, you will need only 24 hours of advance notice for preparations. The Elaborate activity may require additional time to collect materials if you are providing them. See the Advance Preparation section of the Elaborate activity for details on the necessary preparations.