Oh, my prior submission wasn’t good enough?  COME ON!  My lesson plan included a mineshaft AND a tiger shark!  Here’s MakerBot’s description of a minimally detailed lesson plan:

• Objectives: What do you expect the students to learn?
• Structured Lead In: How will you engage the students and connect the new learning to their life?
• Instructions: What are you going to teach? How are you going to do it?
• Independant Practice: What will you have the students do to demonstrate their new learning?
• Evaluation: How will students know if they have learned what you’ve taught them?

Pssh.  No problem.  I can bang out a lesson plan that covers those points.  How’s this:

• Objectives. I expect the students of my lesson plan to learn self reliance, designing for novel problems, designing under less-than-ideal conditions, improvisation, and respect for endangered species.
• Structured Lead In: Nothing is more immediately engaging that being thrown into a mineshaft.  Wait, correction, being thrown into a mineshaft with a tiger.  There will be a direct correlation between design efficacy and the application of their learning to their life in a very real and immediate sense.
• Instructions: I’m going to teach my students using a series of mineshafts and large predators.  They will learn how to apply technology for problem solving, iterative design, and preservation of endangered species.
• Independent Practice: Survive a mineshaft and a tiger.
• Evaluation: One of the great things about this lesson plan is that there are many ways to successfully complete the assignment.  All are essentially the same in their inception, beginning with “Using a MakerBot the student…” and then quickly diverge to multiple “win conditions.”  The most common solutions found my my students are:
  • Using a MakerBot the student escapes the mineshaft, but leaves the tiger, shark, or tiger shark inside.  Extra credit:  Student expresses remorse for leaving said animal in the mineshaft.
  • Using a MakerBot the student builds a PLA tiger, shark, or tiger shark and has it fight (or woo!) the other tiger, shark, or tiger shark, student escapes in the confusion.  Extra credit:  While the PLA and flesh tigers, sharks, or tiger sharks fight (or flirt), you build a second PLA carnivore and ride it out of the mineshaft.
  • Using a MakerBot the student escapes the tiger, shark, or tiger shark by digging even deeper into the mine and builds a new civilization underground inside the mineshaft.  Extra credit:  The student gains the trust and respect of the underground dwelling mole people and teaches them how to use the MakerBot as well.
  • Using a MakerBot the student builds a new civilization of tiger, shark, tiger-shark, and robot hybrids.  Extra credit:  This new human/animal/robot civilization’s national currency is … love.
  • Using a MakerBot the student helps the tiger, shark, or tiger shark to escape, and stays on inside the mineshaft.  Extra credit:  Student increases the MakerBot’s print resolution and builds a tiny extension of MakerBlock University, populates it with a tiny PLA version of me, themselves, a mineshaft, and a tiger, shark, or tiger shark and repeats the lesson plan on a small scale.
  • Using a MakerBot the student teaches the tiger, shark, or tiger shark to operate the MakerBot, thereby demonstrating their own mastery of all things MakerBot-ish.  Extra credit:  The student, tiger, shark, or tiger shark form their own open source hardware company building human-tiger/shark/tiger shark translation devices.

If you use any of these lesson plans in your own classroom, please link to this blog post.