Engineering Notebooks
An Engineering Notebook Documents your Work
Not only do you use an engineering notebook to organize and document your work, it is also a place to reflect on activities and projects. When working in a team, each team member will maintain their own journal to help with collaboration.
Your engineering notebook should have the following:
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An entry for each day or session that you worked on the solution
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Entries that are chronological, with each entry dated
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Clear, neat, and concise writing and organization
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Labels so that a reader understands all of your notes and how they fit into your iterative design process
An entry might include:
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Brainstorming ideas
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Sketches or pictures of prototypes
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Pseudocode and flowcharts for planning
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Any worked calculations or algorithms used
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Answers to guiding questions
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Notes about observations and/or conducted tests
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Notes about and reflections on your different iterations
Extend Your Learning
To connect this activity to a historical instance, ask your students to research Leonardo da Vinci. Known as a famous painter, da Vinci was also a self-taught engineer, creating approximately 30 engineering notebooks, including the renowned Codex Leicester.
To relate this activity to inventions, ask students to research the process of obtaining a patent as well as the role of the engineering notebook in corroborating innovative work.