Thursday, May 30, 2019
Monday, May 27, 2019
Engineering for Industrial Designers and Inventors made it to the Best Product Design Books of All Time
I'm happy to announce that my book, "Engineering for Industrial Designers and Inventors: Fundamentals for Designers of Wonderful Things", made it to BookAuthority's Best Product Design Books of All Time:https://bookauthority.org/books/best-product-design-books?t=cnz1vz&s=award&book=1491932619
Saturday, May 25, 2019
STEAM Education Hurts Art
Leave art alone. Why has art gotten drawn into STEM
education, producing the cute acronym STEAM? Is art the decorative box that you
put technology into? Have artists devolved to stylists?
The problem with STEAM is that art is pulled in as an
afterthought, it is anchored to something not of its own making.
Art is often connected to technology, whether paint pigments
or casting processes. However, art should not be constrained by these technical
matters. Art merely uses the tools of technology. Technology shouldn’t use art.
Every year, my students and I make and launch rockets. The
science is pretty simple: make everything aerodynamic and keep the center of
pressure behind the center of gravity. There is no math. It is a lot of fun and
it is always magical to touch the sky with rockets. However, it is not really
STEM education. It is building stuff and having fun.
Launching a rocket or flying a drone is not STEM
education, it is using technology. The acronym STEM is problematic in that it
gives equal value to all subjects and suggests a sequential movement that is
wrong. One must first understand math and science before moving to engineering and
finally technology. Using technology has nothing to do with understanding the
science and math that undergird it. It is unwise to equally couple the easier insights
of using technology with the more difficult challenges of understanding science
and math.
Technology is more important than science and math for
most of us. We want X-ray technicians to be expert practitioners on safely operating X-ray
machines. We don’t care if they know calculus or physics. But our educational
system is locked into developing structured, theoretical foundations for professions.
Interdisciplinary study is good but we should study MSET
and A instead of STEAM. Maybe MSET&A education is too hard to pronounce,
let’s call it design education and move on.
And one more thing…
While it is easier to define what art is not, the Oxford
English Dictionary commonly uses terms such as creative expression, beauty and
emotional power. However, non artistic expressions can be creative, non artistic
expressions can be beautiful.
One of the OED’s actual definitions is:
The expression or application of human
creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or
sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or
emotional power. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/art
Rocket party: STEM-like activity but actually model building and fun.
Painting party: Art with nothing to do with STEM.
Birds nest: I took this photo in my yard today. Is the bird an artist?
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