Online Curriculum Expands With New Resources

Before she participated in a Design and Discovery summer program, Taylor, an eighth-grader, had no idea what engineers do. The Design and Discovery curriculum, developed by Intel® Innovation in Education, takes students through an extended series of hands-on inquiry activities that give them an understanding of design and engineering principles. By the end of the two-week enrichment experience, Taylor was using the same processes that professional engineers use to design, build, test, and improve her own working prototype of a new product.

	Taylor and her mentor work together on a prototype.

Design and Discovery, available at no charge on the Intel Innovation in Education Web site, has just been updated with new features and real-life examples of student projects—including the story of Taylor's prize-winning invention, a motorized storage device engineered to keep her necklaces from tangling.

New Features
Some of the updates are designed to make the comprehensive curriculum easier to navigate. For example, a new Web structure allows users to navigate through the 18 sequential sessions by clicking on labeled tabs. A new project index helps users find specific information. A downloadable, sortable shopping list has been added to help facilitators gather what they need for implementing the hands-on activities.

Along with these functional improvements, the content of Design and Discovery has been fine-tuned in response to user feedback and observations. For example, the curriculum now outlines a 10-step design process that is better aligned to professional engineering standards. Directions have been made clearer for some of the activities, such as a session where students invent their own mechanical toys.

Variety of Settings
Design and Discovery is being used with success in a variety of settings, including after-school programs, summer camps, and formal classrooms. An update to the implementation section of Design and Discovery includes strategies for effective instruction and examples of successful programs.

For example, in Portland, Oregon, Design and Discovery is used in two-week summer day camp programs geared for girls in middle school. By the end of program, each girl has developed a model of a product or invention that she has designed. The program continues throughout the school year with interested girls gathering once a month, on a Saturday or after school, to continue the curriculum and ultimately to develop prototypes. Students continue working on their projects and meet with mentors who assist them with their project development. A new addition to Design and Discovery provides a nuts-and-bolts look at how these popular summer programs have been implemented.

Design and Discovery has also been used in formal education settings, such as JFK Middle School in Hudson, Massachusetts. Math teacher Peggy Temple decided to use the curriculum as an introduction to independent inquiry, something she knew her students would be doing more frequently as they moved through middle and high school. Temple says the curriculum allowed her to be successful teaching engineering and design. "I didn't know anything about engineering or design, and it opened my eyes up to a whole different way of presenting projects to kids." She realized that her students would take to Design and Discovery when she introduced the first activity, involving the design of a paper clip. "Students worked on this for a long time. All of their ideas were unique. I was amazed," says Temple. By the end of the school year, students had developed prototypes of their own ideas to enter in their local science fair. Several went on to compete at regional and state-level science and engineering fairs.

Lightbulb Experiences
Ruthe Farmer, who has organized Design and Discovery programs in Portland, says the curriculum provides students with a "lightbulb experience in design and engineering." Students become invested in their projects, Farmer adds, "because the projects are based on their experiences and derived from their lives, as opposed to challenges issued by adults."

To learn more go to Design and Discovery.