The Henry Ford in Dearborn has launched an interdisciplinary online curriculum called Innovate that is geared toward middle school students and designed to accelerate innovative mindsets and provide opportunities to identify and solve problems.
“At The Henry Ford, it’s our fundamental belief that inside every child is the potential to change the world,” says Patricia Mooradian, president and CEO. “This revolutionary curriculum provides educators with a ready-made tool that activates an innovative mindset within young students and nurtures their creative adaptability to successfully solve real-world problems.”
The four-course curriculum uses primary sources from The Henry Ford Archive of American Innovation, a collection of 26 million artifacts from 300 years of history. It was developed through a collaboration among educators, historical experts, innovators, and more.
The program also promotes interdisciplinary learning that connects science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) as well as social studies and English, to real-world applications. It also helps students identify and think through problems, design solutions and prototypes to address these problems, and communicate and pitch solutions.
The four courses build on each other and offer students the opportunity to engage with digital artifacts, watch interviews with visionaries and segments from “The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation,” and complete learn-by-doing activities and interactive content that helps prepare students and their prototypes to participate in competitions. It also includes a facilitator guide aligning each course to Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core Standards.
Designed for entire classes, a subscription for the 20-hour program is $499 and includes 10 student user accounts and one teacher user account. Additional student accounts are $25 each. Educators looking for an introduction to the curriculum can download the Model i Primer, a free facilitator guide that introduces the actions and habits of innovators, real-life stories, and learn-by-doing activities.
