Inventors of Today and Yesterday
Introduction
| Task | Process |
Resources | Evaluation
| Conclusion
Introduction:
Have you ever wondered
what the world would be like without the modern conveniences that we take for
granted. What would you do without your television? How could we survive
without a car? These things were first ideas in someone’s head. We have
come to depend on many things that people of the past had no idea about.
You will be learning
about different inventors and inventions of the past and present. You will
be exploring different eras and events that led to these inventions. You
will learn the meaning of “necessity is the mother of invention.” You will
look at the history of computers and see who has made a great impact on
our lives today.
The
Task:
In this unit you will
accomplish several tasks.
-
Y
ou
will choose one (1) inventor to research from the list below.
You will design a
PowerPoint presentation about your inventors telling what they invented,
how we use it today, when s/he invented it and how the invention changed
the world today.
You will create a
timeline placing your four inventors on it using the TimeLiner Program.
You will include this timeline into your PowerPoint presentation.
Process:
Research
-
Choose an
inventors to research.
People to research include:
| Blaise Pascal |
Charles Babbage |
Ada Lovelace |
| Herman Hollerith |
John Bardeen |
Joseph Jacquard |
| William Shockley |
Walter Brittain |
Marcian "Ted" Hoff |
| Robert Noyce |
Jack Kilby |
Georg Scheutz |
| Grace Hopper |
Gottfried Leibniz |
George Stibitz |
| Konrad Zuse |
Howard Aiken |
Alan Kay |
| John von Neumann |
John Presper Eckert |
John Mauchly |
| Alan Turing |
John Atanasoff |
Donald Knuth |
| Ed Roberts |
Gordon Moore |
Bill Gates |
-
Save the research
document 1 time in your class folder.
-
Go to the resource
websites and research the inventor you chose putting the information
onto the documents you saved. One for each inventor.
-
Write a bibliography
for all the sites that you visited to get your information.
-
Handout
Time Line
-
Open TimeLiner and
create a time line with the inventor's important dates and inventions on it.
-
Choose pictures that
go along with the inventor.
-
Save the timeline as
a bitmap so that you can include it into your PowerPoint presentation.
PowerPoint
-
You will need to have
6 slides for your presentation.
-
Design a title slide
for your presentation. It should contain your First and Last name,
teacher’s name, Class Code/Computer #.
-
4 slides should
include
information about your inventor.
-
Include a graphic on
each of the first 5 slides.
-
The 6th
slide should be your bibliography of where you got your information
about your inventor.
Wikipedia
http://www.invent.org
-Inventors' hall of
fame
http://inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm-
information about inventors
Biography.com
http://dept.houstonisd.org/connect/onlineresources/online_resources.htm
Hisd Resources
For more resources go to your school's media
specialist or to the public library. Many schools have entire sets of
Inventor's Encyclopedias. Your media specialist may have videos of famous
inventors you can check out or your teacher can check out. A recent video
you may want to see is October Sky,
a story of a young man who becomes a rocket scientist.
Evaluation
There are three
components to the evaluation.
1.
4
Inventor Research documents
2.
Time Line
3.
PowerPoint Presentation
Conclusion:
Students will be able
to identify various inventors and their inventions. They will be able to
place these inventions in time and identify the historical events that led
to these inventions. They will present the knowledge they have gained
creatively, using various presentation methods, to their peers. Consider how
your life would be different if you didn't have the things you were used
to. You will learn the meaning of the saying "Necessity is the
mother of Invention."
