Help my child has a report and I need advice. Science and Technology?

Question

My sixth grade little girl came home with a report assignment entitled: Write a report on how science and technology affect your life. I really need help because she has no books yet and she understands the subject about as well as I. Help me with helping her with her homework please.

Answer 1

Ask her to think about how the world is different now than it was in the cave man days. Talk about all the ways advances in science and technology have shaped modern life. Brainstorm ideas, then group the ones together that share alot in common to make reasonable paragraphs.

For instance, One paragraph could be how science and technology have shaped modern medicine. How research leads to cures for diseases and vaccines. How technology such as x-ray machines and MRI machines help doctors diagnose their patients,

She could do a paragraph on how science has advanced agricultural practices, and therefore eliminated food shortages (and the need for children to work farms all day to grow their own food, like colonial days)

She could do a paragraph on how technology has made home chores easier, freeing up people to do more work outside the home (now mom has more time for a career because she doesn't have to beat her clothes clean in the creak, we have washing machines for that!)

The teacher is expecting every paper to be different, so its ok if your daughter comes up with her own ideas. She should come up with her own thoughts after you explain it.

Keep grouping ideas together til she has enough ideas to make a few good paragraphs about various topics I am sure they won't expect too much for a one night assignment. Perhaps 5 paragraphs? And include a good intro and conclusion, then she's got a good paper.

Answer 2

Previous posters have lots of great comments

"...she understands the subject about as well as I." I assume this means that both of you are non-technogeeks (welcome to the club!). Don't panic; you don't have to cover ALL this field. She can probably do a great job, and write a good focused paper, on one or two sci/tech areas that *really* catch her interest.

If there's a large city near your hometown, see if there's a science museum there. (You can easily spend two full days in Chicago's Science and Industry; a month isn't enough to cover the Smithsonian science exhibits.) Millions of ideas there to help get the brain factory going.....

Go check out The New Way Things Work by David Macauley. (He's the guy who did those spectacular so-called "kids' books" _Cathedral_ and _Mosque_.) Very readable and fun.

www.howstuffworks.com is a great site..

Good luck to her!

Answer 3

Well, that's kind of general, so you'd need to have her decide the HOW part of it, and then give examples.

A three part report could be:

1. Positive ways science and technology has affected my life. Examples could be anything, from tv, the internet, DVD's , iPods, cell phones, microwave oven, air conditioning, etc. That kind of depends on if they want RECENT science and technology, or just science and technology in general.

2. Negative ways it affects my life, such as having to buy new things all the time to keep up, being more busy in life because technology is always on, such as the time it takes to now download music, answer messages, talk on the cell phone, etc., the kind of society that is created by eveyone being plugged in and online, instead of being in real communities, stuff like that.

3. Ways I hope it will affect me, in the future, and talk about the new technologies for people to travel to space, and new hopes for medicines, and even robotics and other advances.

OR --

If they really just want to know how it affects our lives --

Then, it affects our lives in three important ways:

1. Health: Give examples of how science and technology has shaped the way we think about our health, from people believing we had to have holes drilled in our heads, hundreds of years ago, to learning about germs, and finding cures, and creating hospitals and living longer, etc.

2. Education: How science and tech affect not just how we learn, but what we learn, and give examples of how classrooms have even changed, from having no computers, to kids learning computers in preschool, the amount of access to knowledge we have, etc.

3. Society: How sci and tech are affecting us through the internet and online communication, cell phones, people being more busy than ever before, kids being online and in chat rooms, cell phones for kids, etc, and how that is different from "real" communities we had years ago.

Hope she does great!

Answer 4

well technology definately is affecting my life.

1st of all it increases the rapidity of communication (e-mail-planes-media)
2nd of all allows us to be lazier e-mail is so much easier then slow mail
3rdly it is very practical cell phones (can now be reaced anytime from anywhere)
4- entertainment (tv-radio-internet)
5-computers alone think of everything that can be done online nowadays, you can live without ever leaving your house. you can receive clothes by ordering them online, and the same applies for food!
6-sports, there are always new innovative sports gear. I have a chip in my skis making my skis more or less rigid depending on the skis vibration!
I could go on, but i think that should help you get started for a 6th grader

Answer 5

how do cell phones computers,tv and other electronic devices affect your daily life right now? it is that basic concept that can give her a solid report.
do they make it easier? harder? why and why not do you have these items around your house?