Welcome to Dominic's Technology

The IB Mission Statement

The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.

To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment.

These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right. These ideals are encapsulated in the IB Learner Profile.

The Product Design Cycle Grades 6-10

The design cycle is a model and it is intended to be the central tool to help students create and evaluate products/solutions in response to challenges. The MYP technology design cycle consists of five major stages and these relate to the objectives of the course.

The 5 stages of the Design Cycle are:

INVESTIGATE - DESIGN - PLAN - CREATE - EVALUATE

Investigate

Investigate consists of three main sections. Each section consisting of written parts shown below in BOLD*

• Students should State, Describe and Explain the problem to be solved.

• They should Evaluate the importance of the problem for life, society, and the environment

• They can then Outline the design brief.

*Please refer to the marking matrix to see how each of the bold sections is important to achieve maximum marks.

Each section can then be further divided

Students should develop the design brief, and at the end of the course, they should be able to:

1. Formulate and discuss appropriate questions that guide the investigation

2. Identify and acknowledge a range of appropriate sources of information

3. Collect, analyse, select, organize and evaluate information

4. Evaluate the sources of information.

5. Students formulate a design specification. At the end of the course, they should be able to:

6. list the specific essential requirements that must be met by the product/solution

7. Design tests to evaluate the product/solution against the design specification.

Design

Students create designs for the product/solution and they should be able to:

Generate several (more than one) Feasible designs that meet the design specification. These designs should be annotated, accurate drawings of the proposed product/solution. They can be hand-drawn or generated by using design software like Sketchup

Evaluate each of the designs against the design specification created in the investigation.

Select one design and fully Justify its choice.

Plan

Students plan the product/solution and, they should be able to:

• construct a plan to create the product/solution that has a series of logical steps

• construct a plan to create the product/solution that makes effective use of resources and time

• evaluate the plan and justify any modifications to the design.

Create

Students use appropriate techniques and equipment and, they should be able to:

• use a range of appropriate techniques and equipment competently

• ensure a safe working environment for themselves and others.

Students follow the plan. At the end of the course, they should be able to:

• follow the plan to produce the product/solution

• evaluate the plan and justify any changes to the plan (when necessary).

Students create the product/solution. At the end of the course, they should be able to:

• create a product/solution of appropriate quality.

Evaluate

Students evaluate the product/solution and, they should be able to:

• carry out tests to evaluate the product/solution against the design specification

• evaluate the success of the product/solution in an objective manner based on testing, their own views and the views of the intended user

• evaluate the impact of the product/solution on individuals and on society

• explain how the product/solution could be improved.

Students evaluate their use of the design cycle. At the end of the course, they should be able to:

• evaluate their performance at each stage of the design cycle

• suggest ways in which their performance could be improved.

Each criterion is graded individually and the maximum attainable grade for each is 6 giving a total of 30 points a further 6 points is awarded for a student´s demonstrated attitudes in technology and these are assessed by the teacher on a lesson by lesson basis. Therefore the maximum total grade is 36 points and by applying a set of grade boundaries a final technology grade of between 1 and 7 is obtained. This is explained fully in the Criteria section on this website.