Design and technology is about making things that work and then finding out whether they do. Technology shows up at both ends.
At the making end, a Year 10 phone stand modelled in Tinkercad, or a flat-pack nest box drawn as a laser-cutting net, is Creative Replace: the design work a drawing board used to carry, done on screen. A Year 6 card lantern with a micro:bit that lights up when the room goes dark sits one cell along, in Creative Amplify.
At the testing end, the technology starts to measure things students could not otherwise get at. Year 8 chart every group's joint breaking load live in one Google Sheet. Year 10 use phyphox to measure the peak deceleration inside three packaging designs. Year 12 replay their own impact tests on acrylic, HIPS and polypropylene in slow motion.
Whatever your material area, the same two questions apply: what are students doing, and what would this lesson have been without the device?
Creative Amplify
Each student draws three annotated festival-wear designs on separate layers over one locked figure template in Procreate, and tests two colourways for the strongest.
Creative Replace
Each student models a three-part desk phone stand to a set of phone dimensions in Tinkercad and exports it as an STL file.
Students draw the six panels of a blue tit nest box with finger joints in Tinkercad, lay them flat and export an SVG for the laser cutter.
Each student designs a logo for a fictional sustainable trainer brand and lays out one sheet showing it at three sizes, in three colour treatments and in single-colour black.
Creative Transform
Pairs design a card night lantern for a Reception child, program a micro:bit in MakeCode to light up when the light level drops, and adjust the program after testing it in a dark cupboard.
Interactive Amplify
Groups load four glued pine joints until they fail, enter each breaking load into one shared sheet, and the teacher uses the live chart to question the results that do not fit.
Interactive Replace
Students wire a 9 V battery, a resistor and an LED in Tinkercad Circuits, run the simulation with five resistor values and record the current and brightness for each.
Interactive Transform
Groups seal a school phone running phyphox inside three packaging designs, drop each from one metre, and compare the peak deceleration the sensor records.
Passive Amplify
The teacher zooms into high-resolution images of Bauhaus objects, from Marianne Brandt's tea infuser to Marcel Breuer's tubular steel chairs, while Grade 10 note the design decisions behind each one.
Passive Transform
The teacher films drop-weight impact tests on strips the class cut and notched, in slow motion, and replays them so students can see how each polymer fails.
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.