Grade Eleven

Science and Technology

Students recognize that science and technology are interconnected and that using technology involves assessment of the benefits, risks and costs. Students should build scientific and technological knowledge, as well as the skill required to design and construct devices. In addition, they should develop the processes to solve problems and understand that problems may be solved in several ways.

Benchmark A: [11-12] Understanding Technology
Predict how human choices today will determine the quality and quantity of life on Earth.

Indicators
Understanding Technology1. Identify that science and technology are essential social enterprises but alone they can only indicate what can happen, not what should happen. Realize the latter involves human decisions about the use of knowledge.

2. Predict how decisions regarding the implementation of technologies involve the weighing of trade-offs between predicted positive and negative effects on the environment and/or humans.

3. Explore and explain any given technology that may have a different value for different groups of people and at different points in time (e.g., new varieties of farm plants and animals have been engineered by manipulating their genetic instructions to reproduce new characteristics).

4. Explain why basic concepts and principles of science and technology should be a part of active debate about the economics, policies, politics and ethics of various science-related and technology-related challenges.

5. Investigate that all fuels (e.g., fossil, solar and nuclear) have advantages and disadvantages; therefore society must consider the trade-offs among them (e.g., economic costs and environmental impact).

6. Research sources of energy beyond traditional fuels and the advantages, disadvantages and trade-offs society must consider when using alternative sources (e.g., biomass, solar, hybrid engines, wind and fuel cells).