Engineering and Technology Essential Skills

Essential skills are the MINIMUM that we expect ALL students to attain by the end of their respective Project Lead The Way (PLTW) course.  The values we should be looking for in the essential skills are: Endurance (they have value beyond this year), Leverage (They have value beyond this class), and Readiness (they will need this for school next year). The essential skills should be what we are teaching and assessing. We will go beyond these in our classrooms.
 
Engineering and Technology:
PLTW Design and Modeling students will be able to:

• Develop innovative products and systems that solve problems and extend capabilities based on individual or collective needs and wants.
• Apply creative problem-solving strategies to the improvement of existing devices or processes or the development of new approaches.
• Apply the technology and engineering design process.
• Refine design solutions to address criteria and constraints.
• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different design solutions.
• Improve essential skills necessary to successfully design.
• Apply knowledge and skills learned in science, mathematics, language arts, fine arts, and social studies classes when completing engineering and technology- based assignments.
• Explore engineering and technology related careers.
• Contribute constructively to project teams, assuming various roles and responsibilities to work effectively toward a common goal.

PLTW Automation and Robotics students will be able to:

• Engage in positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior when using technology, including social interactions online or when using networked devices.
• Understand and respect the rights and obligations of using and sharing intellectual property.
• Plan and employ effective research strategies to locate information and other resources for their intellectual or creative pursuits.
• Build knowledge by actively exploring real-world issues and problems, developing ideas and theories and pursuing answers and solutions.
• Know and use a deliberate design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts or solving authentic problems.
• Develop, test and refine prototypes as part of a cyclical design process.
• Break problems into component parts, extract key information, and develop descriptive models to understand complex systems or facilitate problem-solving.
• Understand how automation works and use algorithmic thinking to develop a sequence of steps to create and test automated solutions.
• Communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively by creating or using a variety of digital objects such as visualizations, models or simulations.
• Contribute constructively to project teams, assuming various roles and responsibilities to work effectively toward a common goal. 

Business and Information Technology:
Students will be able to:

• Demonstrate functional understanding of technology concepts, systems, and their interactivity.
• Use hardware and software components and understand the use of input and output devices.
• Use technology as a tool to enhance learning and creativity and to increase productivity in developing their projects.
• Gather, evaluate, use, and cite information from computer technology sources.
• Integrate technology in a social, legal, ethical, and safe manner to be lifelong digital citizens.
• Analyze personal characteristics using Naviance program to create a personal profile and explore careers.
• Apply critical and creative thinking to make decisions, create flexible career plans, and solve problems, to succeed in their secondary and college education, as well as in their careers and life.
• Demonstrate personal skills and employability needed for success in school, life and career.
• Demonstrate management of individual and family finances by applying reliable information and systematic decision-making.
• Analyze how education, income, career, and life choices relate to achieving financial goals.
• Manage money effectively by developing financial goals and budgets.
• Manage credit and debt to remain both creditworthy and financially secure.
• Analyze the features of insurance, its role in balancing risk, and benefits in financial planning.
• Analyze saving and investing for short-term needs and building long-term financial security and wealth.
• Apply concepts of effective business communications to their interpersonal relationships and to their academic, as well as professional, documents and correspondence.