Tech shows are a great way to introduce prospective students, parents, and local business and industry to a technology and engineering or career and technical education program. In addition to showcasing instructional programs, a tech show allows students to demonstrate their professionalism and skills, practice public presentations, and interact…

At technical colleges and secondary-level tech schools, students enrolled in basic electronics labs who have learned about diodes that do rectification are used to seeing power diodes like the 1N4001. When the students are introduced to low-power zener diodes and signal diodes, component identification gets more complex. If the small zeners are…

In Mr. Wood's technology class, students learned about many aspects of engineering, including design of a product, teamwork, testing hypotheses, and testing the final product. In this article, the author describes how his class, particularly his team, applied everything they learned about the process to their kayak design challenge using the IDEAL…

Living in the Adirondack Park and being an avid outdoorsman has often resulted in the author's love of the outdoors working its way into class projects. In 2010, the author gave a group of 25 students in grades 9-12 a challenge that required them to design and construct a prototype inexpensive, lightweight kayak for backpackers and fisherman. In…