Tools are used to do things better or more easily and to do some things that could not otherwise be done at all. In technology, tools are used to observe, measure, and make things.
Learning Goal 2
When trying to build something or to get something to work better, it usually helps to follow directions if there are any or to ask someone who has done it before for suggestions.
For Grades: 3-5
Learning Goal 1
Throughout all of history, people everywhere have invented and used tools. Most tools of today are different from those of the past but many are modifications of very ancient tools.
Learning Goal 2
Technology enables scientists and others to observe things that are too small or too far away to be seen otherwise and to study the motion of objects that are moving very rapidly or are hardly moving at all.
Learning Goal 3
Measuring instruments can be used to gather accurate information for making scientific comparisons of objects and events and for designing and constructing things that will work properly.
Learning Goal 4
Technology extends the ability of people to change the world: to cut, shape, or put together materials; to move things from one place to another; and to reach farther with their hands, voices, senses, and minds. The changes may be for survival needs such as food, shelter, and defense; for communication and transportation; or to gain knowledge and express ideas.
For Grades: 6-8
Learning Goal 1
In earlier times, the accumulated information and techniques of each generation of workers were taught on the job directly to the next generation of workers. Today, the knowledge base for technology can be found as well in libraries of print and electronic resources and is often taught in the classroom.
Learning Goal 2
Technology is essential to science for such purposes as access to outer space and other remote locations, sample collection and treatment, measurement, data collection and storage, computation, and communication of information.
Learning Goal 3
Engineers, architects, and others who engage in design and technology use scientific knowledge to solve practical problems. They also usually have to take human values and limitations into account.
For Grades: 9-12
Learning Goal 1
Technological problems and advances often create a demand for new scientific knowledge, and new technologies make it possible for scientists to extend their research in new ways or to undertake entirely new lines of research. The very availability of new technology itself often sparks scientific advances.
Learning Goal 2
Mathematics, creativity, logic, and originality are all needed to improve technology.
Learning Goal 3a
Technology usually affects society more directly than science does because technology solves practical problems and serves human needs (and also creates new problems and needs).
Learning Goal 3b
One way science affects society is by stimulating and satisfying people's curiosity and enlarging or challenging their views of what the world is like.
Learning Goal 4
Engineers use knowledge of science and technology, together with strategies of design, to solve practical problems. Scientific knowledge provides a means of estimating what the behavior of things will be even before they are made. Moreover, science often suggests new kinds of behavior that had not even been imagined before, and so leads to new technologies.
Subchapter B
Design and Systems
For Grades: K-2
Learning Goal 1
People may not be able to actually make or do everything that they can design.
For Grades: 3-5
Learning Goal 1
There is no perfect design. Designs that are best in one respect (safety or ease of use, for example) may be inferior in other ways (cost or appearance). Usually some features must be sacrificed to get others.
Learning Goal 2
Even a good design may fail. Sometimes steps can be taken ahead of time to reduce the likelihood of failure, but it cannot be entirely eliminated.
Learning Goal 3
The solution to one problem may create other problems.
For Grades: 6-8
Learning Goal 1
Design usually requires taking into account not only physical and biological constraints, but also economic, political, social, ethical, and aesthetic ones.
Learning Goal 2a
All technologies have effects other than those intended by the design, some of which may have been predictable and some not.
Learning Goal 2b
Side effects of technologies may turn out to be unacceptable to some of the population and therefore lead to conflict between groups.
Learning Goal 3a
Almost all control systems have inputs, outputs, and feedback.
Learning Goal 3bc
The essence of control is comparing information about what is happening to what people want to happen and then making appropriate adjustments. This procedure requires sensing information, processing it, and making changes.
Learning Goal 3d
In almost all modern machines, microprocessors serve as centers of performance control.
Learning Goal 4a
Systems fail because they have faulty or poorly matched parts, are used in ways that exceed what was intended by the design, or were poorly designed to begin with.
Learning Goal 4b
The most common ways to prevent failure are pretesting of parts and procedures, overdesign, and redundancy.
For Grades: 9-12
Learning Goal 1
In designing a device or process, thought should be given to how it will be manufactured, operated, maintained, replaced, and disposed of and who will sell, operate, and take care of it. The costs associated with these functions may introduce yet more constraints on the design.
Learning Goal 2
The value of any given technology may be different for different groups of people and at different points in time.
Learning Goal 3
Complex systems have layers of controls. Some controls operate particular parts of the system and some control other controls. Even fully automatic systems require human control at some point.
Learning Goal 4
Risk analysis is used to minimize the likelihood of unwanted side effects of a new technology. The public perception of risk may depend, however, on psychological factors as well as scientific ones.
Learning Goal 5
The more parts and connections a system has, the more ways it can go wrong. Complex systems usually have components to detect, back up, bypass, or compensate for minor failures.
Learning Goal 6
To reduce the chance of system failure, performance testing is often conducted using small-scale models, computer simulations, analogous systems, or just the parts of the system thought to be least reliable.
Subchapter C
Issues in Technology
For Grades: K-2
Learning Goal 1
People, alone or in groups, are always inventing new ways to solve problems and get work done. The tools and ways of doing things that people have invented affect all aspects of life.
Learning Goal 2
When a group of people wants to build something or try something new, they should try to figure out ahead of time how it might affect other people.
For Grades: 3-5
Learning Goal 1a
Technology has been part of life on the earth since the advent of the human species.
Learning Goal 1b
Like language, ritual, commerce, and the arts, technology is an intrinsic part of human culture, and it both shapes society and is shaped by it.
Learning Goal 1c
The technology available to people greatly influences what their lives are like.
Learning Goal 2
Any invention is likely to lead to other inventions. Once an invention exists, people are likely to think up ways of using it that were never imagined at first.
Learning Goal 3
Transportation, communications, nutrition, sanitation, health care, entertainment, and other technologies give large numbers of people today the goods and services that once were luxuries enjoyed only by the wealthy. These benefits are not equally available to everyone.
Learning Goal 4
Factors such as cost, safety, appearance, environmental impact, and what will happen if the solution fails must be considered in technological design.
Learning Goal 5
Technologies often have drawbacks as well as benefits. A technology that helps some people or organisms may hurt others—either deliberately (as weapons can) or inadvertently (as pesticides can).
Learning Goal 6
Because of their ability to invent tools and processes, people have an enormous effect on the lives of other living things.
For Grades: 6-8
Learning Goal 2
Technology cannot always provide successful solutions to problems or fulfill all human needs.
Learning Goal 3
Throughout history, people have carried out impressive technological feats, some of which would be hard to duplicate today even with modern tools. The purposes served by these achievements have sometimes been practical, sometimes ceremonial.
Learning Goal 4
Technology is largely responsible for the great revolutions in agriculture, manufacturing, sanitation and medicine, warfare, transportation, information processing, and communications that have radically changed how people live and work.
Learning Goal 5
New technologies increase some risks and decrease others. Some of the same technologies that have improved the length and quality of life for many people have also brought new risks.
Learning Goal 6
Rarely are technology issues simple and one-sided. Relevant facts alone, even when known and available, usually do not settle matters. That is because contending groups may have different values and priorities. They may stand to gain or lose in different degrees, or may make very different predictions about what the future consequences of the proposed action will be.
Learning Goal 7
Societies influence what aspects of technology are developed and how these are used. People control technology (as well as science) and are responsible for its effects.
Learning Goal 8
Scientific laws, engineering principles, properties of materials, and construction techniques must be taken into account in designing engineering solutions to problems.
Learning Goal 9
In all technologies, there are always trade-offs to be made.
For Grades: 9-12
Learning Goal 1
Social and economic forces strongly influence which technologies will be developed and used. Which will prevail is affected by many factors, such as personal values, consumer acceptance, patent laws, the availability of risk capital, the federal budget, local and national regulations, media attention, economic competition, and tax incentives.
Learning Goal 2
Some scientists and engineers are comfortable working in situations in which some secrecy is required, but others prefer not to do so. It is generally regarded as a matter of individual choice and ethics, not one of professional ethics.
Learning Goal 3
In deciding on proposals to introduce new technologies or curtail existing ones, some key questions arise concerning possible alternatives, who benefits and who suffers, financial and social costs, possible risks, resources used (human, material, or energy), and waste disposal.
Learning Goal 4
The human species has a major impact on other species in many ways: reducing the amount of the earth's surface available to those other species, interfering with their food sources, changing the temperature and chemical composition of their habitats, introducing foreign species into their ecosystems, and altering organisms directly through selective breeding and genetic engineering.
Learning Goal 5
Human inventiveness has brought new risks as well as improvements to human existence.
Learning Goal 6
The human ability to influence the course of history comes from its capacity for generating knowledge and developing new technologies—and for communicating ideas to others.
