ENGINEER

This collection contains nine activities which support science learning within the context of a wide range of engineering design challenges. Designed to foster questioning and creativity and to develop problem-solving skills including testing alternative options, interpreting results and evaluating their solutions. Tasks and challenges have been designed to be as open-ended as possible, and to avoid ‘right answers’; in particular, aiming to avoid competition which may alienate some students, while retaining the motivation of wanting to solve a problem. An important goal of all of the units is to maximise opportunities for group work and to support students in learning to work together and communicate their ideas effectively.

The activities are:

*Life support: direct water flow to plants

*Music to the ears: designing and creating a sound generator

*Knee deep: designing and constructing a water pond

*Huff and puff: designing a device for measuring exhalation volume 

*High and dry: protecting objects on a floating platform

*A fine balance: building a hanging sculpture

*Popular mechanics: becoming a designer of machines

*High flyers: building a glider with everyday materials

*Super sucker: designing a machine to clean up litter

* Cosy toes: winter-proof a pair of shoes

These resources were produced under the funding of the 7th framework programme, as part of ENGINEER project, contract No. 288989. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License