Technology refers to all the ways people use their inventions and discoveries to satisfy their needs and desires. Science on the other hand attempts to explain why things happen. Technology is concerned with making things happen. The two of these things are important to everyone, but which is concentrated on depends on an individual's role in society. The consumer is busy wanting things to improve life, while the supplier utilizes scientist to create a solution to give consumers what they want. Students need to be aware of people's need to live in greater comfort than ever before. Thanks to electricity today, machines do most of the work. They have made work easier, it is now possible to do the same work with less effort and in less time. This allows people more leisure time.
I teach 6th , 7th & 8th grade self - contained special education at East Rock Global Magnet. I often run into the problem of finding something on a level that my students can understand yet interesting enough to entice them to learn. Electricity is something that they should definitely learn about, given that it is essential for how they are accustomed to living. By relating electricity to their everyday life, I believe it will spark enough interest in them to willingly participate and gain some knowledge in the process.
In this unit I plan to explore electronic inventions that are directly related to the evolving of Technology At Home through out the 20th century. We will look at household gadgets that use electricity that the students feel that they can't live without, such as: the telephone, refrigerator, television, stove, microwave, stereo, tape recorder, radio, vacuum cleaner, washer and dryer.
All of these products exist because of the discovery of electricity. Exploring the basic fundamentals of electricity I plan to give middle school students a good understanding of how electricity works. We will examine life before electricity. List some possible motivation that pushed for its discovery. Once discovered, what people made electric inventions that led to the contribution that enhance people living conditions and their continued improvement through technology.
Electricity that runs our homes is very powerful and to dangerous to experiment with. Therefore we will do simpler experiments with electricity and magnets, relating them to the electricity used in our homes to run our electrical appliances. We will examine each invention and their inventors. We will also take a look at how they have evolved since their conception. We will compare life in the past without these inventions, life when they were first introduced and life now with the latest version. We will also connect how the discovery of electricity made each invention possible. Finally we will attempt to foresee how these inventions will once again evolve in the 21st century and what impact they will have on our life in the home.
