Don't forget the redesign!
After recently attending the ITEEA (Int'l Technology & Engineering Educators Assoc) conference in Atlanta, I was struck by a number of key takeaways, but one in particular that confirmed something I'd been feeling for quite a while now. As a STEM teacher, we spend a significant amount of time going over the Engineering Design Process , which encourages the following steps, (there are many variations, but this is the idea): image via http://shop.dowlingmagnets.com/p/engineering-design-process-magnets This process is extremely useful in any sort of problem-solving/computational thinking kind of situation. However, in my weekly 45 min class periods with 8th graders and Legos, in a best-case scenario, we'd get to prototyping by the end of class. If we set the process up to last several classes, the Redesign portion of the process often went something like this: Discuss with your group what didn't go well in your project and decide what if anything you would h