Lesson Plan: Design an Invention to Keep First Responders Safe | PBS NewsHour

First responders like firefighters and police officers face dangerous and difficult situations on a regular basis. The intense challenges that emergency situations bring may be reduced by new technological inventions that offer greater protection and new ways to save lives.

This lesson is part of NewsHour Extra’s “Invention Education” series which takes a look at how the invention process begins–from identifying a problem to solve to designing and redesigning a product to applying for a patent. However big or small, inventions change lives each day.

Overview: Students will identify a problem that police personnel or firefighters experience in various phases of their work. Students will conceptualize, design and fabricate an inventive device. Devices may be a retrofit of an existing device (innovation) or a device not yet produced (invention) that meets the beneficiaries’ needs.

Students will utilize the invention process to ensure that useful and unique devices are fabricated and that they may be transferable into other fields and are marketable. Students will showcase their inventions to first responders in their local community who will review and provide feedback. Take a look at this lesson plan in action by watching the video below!

Doug Scott teaches Engineering and Robotics at Hopkinton High School in Massachusetts. He started off as a business undergraduate student at Framingham State University but was always a lifelong inventor at heart. Doug’s 17-year teaching career sprung from his hockey coaching experiences, which have been instrumental in helping him motivate students through the inventing processes. Doug and the Natick High School InvenTeam participated in the Lemelson-MIT Program’s EurekaFest in 2013. In the spring of 2014, Doug accompanied two student representatives from Natick to the fourth White House Science Fair. Just a few years later, their invention was awarded U.S. Patent 20,140,360,420. Doug was awarded the 2014 Massachusetts STEM Teacher of the Year and continues to be an advocate for invention education for all. 

Access the original lesson from PBS NewsHour here.