This post was written by Peter DeCraene, the 2020-21 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at the Library of Congress.
The same Observe-Reflect-Question protocol that can guide primary source analysis can also launch an engineering design process by helping learners to define a problem and imagine what a solution might look like. Extending the process by a couple of steps, Plan and Create, completes one cycle of an engineering design process. Students can experience and apply this engineering process by constructing their versions of something that has been around at least from the middle of the nineteenth century: the pop-up book.
Ask students to observe the two still pictures from Library of Congress videos about pop-up books. What do they notice? What do they wonder about the pictures?