Engineering Technology in Schools

A technology update in Education Week (free registration required) announces that “a high-tech firm has offered Minnesota teachers free mechanical-engineering and design software potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars in a bid to foster student interest in math, science, and engineering.” According to the article, “Fewer than 10 percent of Minnesota high school graduates pursue degrees in engineering, and of those, only about half earn a degree.”

Making sure advanced technological tools are available to classrooms is a necessary step toward ensuring that we have a generation of students interested in becoming engineers and capable of interacting with the rapidly-developing technology of engineering professions.

In running epistemic games, we have seen that students’ interest in a field is heightened when they develop a sense of identity related to that field, as a professional scientist does. This is why in Digital Zoo, as students use the computer based software Sodaconstructor to design their structures, they also role-play as professional engineers, and that role is reinforced by other adult players in the game: design advisors, clients, and project managers.