Twenty-fifth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

In today’s consumer world, technology is becoming increasingly alien to most of us in the sense that ownership over it is no longer taken. Technology is increasingly treated as independent and self-sufficient. It, therefore, is becoming increasingly difficult to teach technology subjects in school and motivate education students to take on the subject. With this project, we aim to counter these developments and devised a module to explore with students technology in a hands-on way to give them the confidence to take back ownership, but also responsibility in regards to technology. We work with education students preparing to teach in primary schools. This project is part of a national program to further technology in primary schools in order to motivate more students to study technology and ultimately educate more skilled technology experts. It includes an emphasis on gender to ensure equality and especially encourage girls to engage in the subject. A number of experiments tackle the cycle of inventing, constructing and applying technology as well as discuss its ethical dimension.