Unfortunately the class I’m about to describe doesn’t use broadband – at least not that I can see but I thought how it was taught and the skills it taught were the first step towards getting kids to be better technology users.

District 833 started a Design and Modeling from Project Lead the Way. It teaches kids engineering skills through a software program led by the teacher. Here’s the gist from an article in the South Washington County Bulletin:

The goal of the lessons is to build a racecar model, but to do so, students must study how to create basic geometric shapes such as ellipses, cones, cubes and spheres and combine them. Computers can show the model from virtually a limitless number of viewpoints, according to lesson plans.

Students learn the basics of engineering by adding holes, slots and extrusions to their models.

Partially I think this is amazing – because this epitomizes the exact skills I don’t have. These skills I know are the new way to design just about anything. If you can do this, you can work with racecar designers around the world to create the coolest racecar in the world – or the coolest bridge or building or remote x-ray machine.