Encourage tinkering with ideas, relationships, connections. Set up situations where students have to find information not readily available in school texts. Provide opportunity for students to design open-ended explorations of the concept. Provide multiple options so students can plan a unique "proof" of learning.

Group design of future of an existing invention.

Objective: To develop an awareness that complex inventions and/or technological processes have developed from additions to simpler inventions and/or the addition of deletion of attributes. To understand the necessity for open mindedness in brainstorming possibilities and provide students with opportunity to understand that they can monitor group solutions by making intelligent decisions.

Activity: In teams of four, students will set up companies and select a current invention or tehcnological process and do historical research to observe trends. Companies will project what that invention might be like 25 years from now. The projects must be plausible not involving magic or extraordinary powers.

Assessment: Group design of a project.