Dillman Tech and Engineering

Teaching technical drawing remotely is tough. I started this year with my engineering design students wondering how I could help them build their hand sketching skills without being in the classroom to draw with pencil, paper, and drafting tools. Asking students to photograph or scan drawings at home proved to be a fruitless endeavor, so I developed these skill-builders just for the occasion! Each of the worksheets in this bundle was designed from the ground up for virtual learning, but they can

This collection of virtual lab activities on simple machines was originally designed as a make-up activity for students that didn't get to complete the labs in class. Now that the world has gone virtual, they are the perfect companion for a science, technology, or engineering classroom teaching in a remote learning or hybrid setting. Each lab is filled with videos explaining the real-world applications of various simple machines, recorded lab experiments, and digital force sensor data. Students

This project is a new spin on an old favorite. Check out the video preview here!Instead of having students complete a paper packet of instructions and drawings, I use an electronic portfolio to guide them through the steps of the project and explain directions. Students add their drawings and pictures of their physical prototype to the portfolio as they go, and have a beautiful, well organized presentation to submit at the end. You can easily grade their work and provide feedback, while keeping

Do your students learn to use dial calipers? Do you have access to a 3D printer? Then this activity is for you! You can view the video preview here!This self-scoring Google Form presents students with a dimensioned orthographic drawing of "The Blue Block", except that the dimensions are mysteriously missing... Students must use a set of dial calipers to collect the 12 missing measurements from the 3D printer blocks and enter them into the form. This will require them to use the full range of th

I teach orthographic drawings every year to my middle school students, and every year they find it super boring. Who doesn't like to study the way an object is rotated in order to generate 2D views of its sides?? Anyway, I went looking for a way to make this lesson fun and hands-on, and this is what I came up with. Now the kids love it and they remember the rules better. Here's how it works. I have six objects that are vaguely similar in size and shape, but with different angled edges, curves,

This bundle includes all of the resources for my lesson on automation in manufacturing, including the lesson slides, guided notes document (with answer key), and the standards-aligned lesson plan. Introduce your students to the world of manufacturing. Show them how it has evolved over time into the high-tech machine that it is today. Help your classes understand the impacts of the industrialized world, and their place within it. This lesson is a great fit for middle or high school technology an

I love to use this activity at the start of a unit on the Engineering Design process. Students watch an 11-minute TED Talk by MIT engineer Amos Winter, who explains in layman's terms how he and his team worked through the design process to develop an inexpensive off-road wheelchair for use in developing countries. As they watch, students try to identify the actions that the design team is doing during each step of the engineering design process. The video never explicitly calls out the "steps"

This lesson builds on the concepts of my lesson on foundations by explaining the ways that floors and walls are constructed in conventional building techniques, focusing mainly on wood-frame construction. I use this lesson with my architecture students, focusing more on design considerations, how these systems work, terminology, and why buildings might be designed a certain way. This slideshow would also make a terrific introduction to key concepts for building trades students, though I usually

This lesson introduces residential electrical systems and explains the basics of how electrical systems are designed and built into structures, focusing mainly on residential construction. I use this lesson with my architecture students, focusing more on design considerations, how these systems work, terminology, and why buildings might be designed a certain way. This slideshow would also make a terrific introduction to key concepts for building trades students, though I usually stop short of ex

This lesson introduces foundations and explains the ways that different types of foundations are designed and built in conventional structures, focusing mainly on residential construction. I use this lesson with my architecture students, focusing more on design considerations, how these systems work, terminology, and why buildings might be designed a certain way. This slideshow would also make a terrific introduction to key concepts for building trades students, though I usually stop short of ex

This presentation is actually two presentations. You will receive the Google Slideshow, which contains all the lesson info, videos, etc., and is editable. The slideshow also includes a link to the Presi lesson, which is not editable, but which is a really fun and visually attention-grabbing way to present and navigate the topic. This lesson introduces students to some fundamental mechanical concepts related to types of motion, speed, torque, etc. and 12 different mechanisms commonly used to alt

Hand this Google slideshow over to your students and watch them crack into the Autodesk Fusion 360 CAD modeling program for the first time. The easy-to-follow instructions will show them the ropes of this software, with many quick, easy tutorial videos. Learn the basics of creating and saving f3d design files. See how to work in the 2D sketch environment, as well as some of the super basic 3D modeling tools. Discover the appearance library, and put your skills to the test with a few challenges.

This bundle contains all of the resources I use to teach my 7th grade technology students about aerodynamics. In this bundle, you will find: The lesson slideshow (including video lesson)Guided notes worksheetGoogle Form quizCO2 Dragster Design Challenge (including video instructions)As a free bonus with this bundle, you will also get the race day student worksheet, which includes the project grading rubric and a math-based student activity for race day, which walks them through calculating their

This project is a new spin on an old favorite. Check out the video preview here!Instead of having students make physical dioramas of their reverse engineering items, I use an electronic portfolio to guide them through the steps of the project and explain directions. Students add their drawings, CAD models, and other work to the portfolio as they go, and have a beautiful, well organized presentation to submit at the end. You can easily grade their work and provide feedback, while keeping a digit

My Level 1 Architecture students often don't know about the wide variety of styles that exist for residential structures. They know a house should have windows, doors, a roof, etc., but ask them to list a few choices for each of these, and they come up short. I use this research project as a week-1 activity to get students more familiar with architecture styles, elements, and the terminology needed to discuss them. They spend about 80-120 minutes researching their chosen style and creating a sli

This slideshow will introduce middle school students to the fundamental concepts behind electricity, no experience required! This lesson provides a brief introduction to many terms and concepts necessary to begin understanding electricity/electronics, including: Atomic particlesConductors vs. InsulatorsAC vs. DC CurrentEnergy Conversions (Motors, Generators, Batteries, Electromagnets)Power GenerationVoltage, Current, Resistance, Ohm's LawSeries vs. Parallel CircuitsNo experience? No problem! Eve

This test was designed to follow a unit on orthographic drawing and sketching. The name of my course is design and drawing for engineering, but most schools know this as design and drawing for production. Its an early high school course in technology, engineering, and design. This test should be a good fit for anyone teaching about orthographic drawing techniques. This assessment will see if your students can differentiate between the different types of lines used in technical drawings, and test

This bundle includes everything you need to introduce your students to the concepts of forces and motion! From a colorful and engaging lesson slideshow, to clear, informative videos, to a variety of skill builders and practice exercises, and multiple well-balanced assessments, these resources have everything you need to get the point across. This lesson focuses on Newton's Laws of Motion with lots of real-life examples, but also introduces related concepts like aerodynamics and Bernoulli's prin

This test is designed to follow a unit on the Engineering Design Process. It is written mainly for high schoolers, but would work nicely for middle school students also. The exact steps and terms in a design process vary from one process to the next, but I tried to write these questions in a way that would work for just about any version of the process you like to teach. You might want to tinker with the wording to suit your exact process or vocabulary preferences. This Google Form includes 15 m

Hand this Google slideshow over to your students and watch them crack into the Autodesk Revit architectural modeling program for the first time. The easy-to-follow instructions will show them the ropes of this software, with quick, easy tutorial videos. There is a wealth of videos out there about Revit. I found that none of them quite served my purpose. I teach architecture to high school students, and we focus on residential. The training resources from Autodesk, while clear and thorough, tend