KDN: Kids Design Network
About this resource
- Appropriate grades
- 4–7
- Subjects
- mathematics (measurement), science (physics and physical science, technology & innovation), teaching methods (cooperative learning, discovery learning, project-based learning), thinking skills (higher order thinking)
- Provider
- DuPage Children's Museum
Legal
This catalog record is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. This license applies to the content of this page only and does not apply to the referenced website.
Investigate a challenge, dream up a design, and draw your plans on the computer. Then, using the Internet, show your design to a real engineer! They'll help with your design, so you can go and build it!
Educator's guide
Imagine involving your students in a collaborative effort to solve a problem. You select a challenge that reflects the topics you're studying, then the students design and plan a solution, and show their design to a real engineer who will help them build the gadget they have designed. Can this really happen, and is it really free? The answer is yes, thanks to the DuPage Children's Museum.
The Kids Design Network provides real engineering challenges for upper elementary students. The ideas are relevant and appealing to the students. For example, from the Door Alarm Challenge: Suppose you were making a surprise birthday gift for your sister. You need to design a door alarm that will alert you so you can keep the secret as you work. How will the alarm be triggered? What will the signal be?
This mechanical engineering project is not some hypothetical application of technological design, but rather a situation students can relate directly to their own lives. Following the process through from design to implementation of solution will provide an authentic engineering experience for the students, and the availability of an engineer for support and encouragement adds a professional element to the student experience.
All challenges involve using simple machines and using the Internet for communication. Topics such as drama, art, gravity, friction, and magnetism are integrated into the challenges available. Current challenges are
- Puppet Challenge
- Slowly Moving Marble Challenge
- Civil Engineering Camping Challenge
- Chemical Engineering Challenge
- Nuclear Engineering Challenge
- Door Alarm Challenge
A step-by-step Teacher's Guide provides answers to your questions about how to plan for and implement this activity in your classroom. This online activity fits perfectly into the Grade 5 science curriculum (Goal 4: The learner will conduct investigations and use appropriate technologies to build an understanding of forces and motion in technological designs.) The Grade 5 Information Skills standards are also addressed (Goal 5: The learner will COMMUNICATE reading, listening, and viewing experiences, Objective 3: Collaborate with others, both in person and through technologies, to identify information problems and to design, develop and evaluate information products and solutions.)
