Creating disruptive innovators: Serious educational game design on the technology and engineering spectrum

Abstract

This chapter describes a history of design thinking and how design can play into the Next Generation Science Standards from a practical perspective. We discuss participatory learning and design in disruptive classrooms. Technology-engineering is not simply an applied science since often technologists and engineers develop innovations in which the underlying science is not understood (e.g. the keystone in arches was used before forces as vectors were understood), technological design is uniquely different from inquiry, the design-production cycle entails much more than just the science of the idea, and technological/engineering literacy involves fundamental literacy and understanding technological/engineering principles. We conclude with a practical example and model of Serious Educational Game design that has evolved and modified over 10 years.