Grades: 11/12
Subject Area / Course Credit: Elective, 1 credit
Pre-requisite: none, though Design Technology I/Design Technology Foundations or Foundation Art & Design is beneficial.
Applied Design Technology is a (STEM) project-based learning (PBL) course where students will design, engineer and manufacture personal projects using a broad spectrum of materials and hands-on techniques utilizing the Makerspace. Throughout this course students will enrich their “Maker Mentality” – a do-it-yourself, process-oriented ability to actively learn, problem solve and gain a genuine feeling of capability. With this skill they will create a Technical/Investigation Notebook, in which they will conceptualize, sketch, research, plan, modify and solidify a personal idea/concept they are developing. Students will investigate and fabricate their ideas to fruition, with the inherent imperfections, mistakes and failures encountered along this process welcomed and embraced as valuable learning tools. After studying and applying the basics of a variety of outputs/crafts – for example, woodworking, electronics/programming, sewing, metalworking, digital manufacturing, computer-aided design (CAD), 3D printing and Laser Cutting to name a few – the final project calls for the student to develop and exhibit a personal creation focusing on one of these outputs.