What makes a good invention?

The start of the quarter delivered a new group of students to Math Literacy. The Invention Design Challenge Project has been incredibly successful the last two quarters and students today were excited to be able to get the project started after what their peers have shared. Students are always the best avenue for advertisement :-) I even had a few students who already had invention ideas ready to go for today!

Today's entry event: What makes a good invention?

1. Students brainstormed five characteristics of good inventions on their own.
2. Students broke up into groups of three each with a specific role: manager, reporter, and speaker.
3. Students shared their five ideas with each other and discussed common themes.
4. Students collaborated to determine a group list of the top five characteristics of good inventions.
5. They used their new group list to evaluate a cell phone and then a magnet using a Likert scale for each characteristic. The cell phone earned mostly 4's while the magnet earned mostly 3's.
6. The discussion evolved into what makes an invention useful.

Tomorrow we'll further evaluate the concept of a "good invention" and then watch the "Smart Wheel" invention pitch from "Shark Tank."

Individual evaluation vs. overall team score

One group working to create a new top five list