Week 4 Blog prompts

READ AND FOLLOW ALL THE DIRECTIONS TO ACHIEVE THE HIGHEST GRADE POSSIBLE!!!

Premiering on PBS in October 2009, the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning series DESIGN SQUAD returns for its third season with a fresh cast of high-school aged contestants eager to take on design challenges that task their creative reserves! DESIGN SQUAD is high-energy, high-drama reality TV that lets kids show off their smarts as they design and build working solutions for real-world clients—people who are hungry for clever ideas from a new generation of innovators. From creating remote-controlled flying football targets for Hasbro to dry land dog sleds for the Jamaica Dog Sled Team, the action culminates in the final episode when the top two scorers battle for the Grand Prize: a $10,000 college scholarship from the Intel Foundation.

Before you watch DESIGN SQUAD:

Introduce yourself with design process.

The Design Process

When engineers set out to solve a problem,

their first solution is rarely their best. Instead, they tinker,

try different ideas, fail, learn from mistakes, and try again.

The series of steps engineers use to arrive at a

solution is called the design process.

You can approach almost any problem

using the steps of the design process—

it's a great way to come up with lots of ideas, improve a design,

and learn from mistakes. In fact, the design process is

something people use every day—planning an outing,

writing a letter, making breakfast, or doing any task

where they create something that did not exist before.

Part 1: Watch one of the episodes below, then answer a-e in a blog post. If you do not see the links below, check your gmail. I sent the links last night!

Episode:Need for speed: http://pbskids.org/designsquad/season1/index.html?pid=7L41Dj2xWGb_v64qbmo_zGO2B5L2Unk_

Episode: Rock on – sound: http://pbskids.org/designsquad/season1/index.html?pid=WIx5iZxOB_ZJPjQK9ri0Dpxwcpy_ANtM

Episode: Bodies electric:: http://pbskids.org/designsquad/season1/index.html?pid=_L6W0dM_SupsTnORaApAN_Jcx5lB4Tnl

Episode:Winner Takes All: http://pbskids.org/designsquad/season1/index.html?pid=Kdjz28GyDxs3EDghkFhjcAO51gUcxl7b

Part 2: Blog about a-e below.

Paragraph 1:

1. What problems do they solve? (summary of challenge)
2. What strategies do they use?
3. Discuss how the DESIGN SQUAD contestants work together, learn from one another, and support each other during a challenge.

Paragraph 2

1. How would you approach the problem?
2. What did you learn from watching this episode?

Title/Label your post like this:

Week4-(whichever episode you chose above)

For example: Week4-Rock on-sound

Part 3: Read and comment on your teammates.

Use the scoring rubric below to score each response. Make educated and professional comments to your teammates explaining the score you chose. You must make productive comments on at least 3 teammates. “I agree with you” is not productive. You can cross teams, but crossing grade levels will not count towards your 3.