For this post, I refuse to get cantankerous.

Now that I have put that out there, I am wondering how to work the science of all the technology our students find at their fingertips into school. This does not mean that they all become engineering students before they leave elementary school. I am thinking more along the lines of the CONCEPTS of how things work. By grade 5 almost all the kids have cell phones, for example, but I would be willing to bet a delicious som tam dinner that perhaps 2 know how they work.

In the 1800's meetings were organized all over Britain to explain the remarkable advances in science and technology to anyone who wanted to listen. Evolution, steam power, industrial production - they were all revolutionary in their way and leading scientists came out to explain them. Today, we are surrounded by things that are essentially a mystery to us but we use them habitually.

When 4 million transistors can fit on Intel's newest chip which just happens to be the size of the period at the end of the sentence (see my earlier post and link), it's a pretty awe inspiring concept. Our students could and should have the opportunities to talk about how things work. At the very least, it might inspire some of them to first "mess around" and then "geek out" (thank you MacArthur Foundation - I don't know where I would have found equivalent words to describe what I am talking about) with their techno toys. As it is, I find it hard to imagine that any of our students will ever get to the point where they are designing new technologies if they don't start talking about and taking apart the devices all around them.