Standing at the front of the room, Rosalinda and Elisa are nervous. Their whole class is present today, the Friday before April vacation, and every other third grader in the room is looking at them. This will be the ninth and final time this morning that a pair of students would test a model bridge they designed and built out of toothpicks.
Having seen all of the other bridges get tested, they will later recount, the girls now notice problems with their own design and construction. Their bridge is among the lightest in the class--which is good--but to achieve this they used fewer diagonal members. They also notice two weak spots they forgot to correct on Wednesday. But it's too late.
Like their classmates before them, they suspend a bucket from their bridge and begin to fill it with textbooks. Although the bridge performs better than they'd feared, the test is over fairly quickly. Their bridge supported nine pounds--255 times its own weight, which was close to the class average. After the activity, both girls said they were not disappointed, but each believed that if they built another bridge, it would be far better.

Introduction
As I help design and conduct technology activities with K-8 teachers and students in general education and technology classrooms, I've often come to the same conclusion as many of my colleagues: something's missing. This thought often crosses my mind when students have arrived at a solution to a design problem.
They create the solution, show it to their teacher and classmates, and perhaps test it for functionality. It's then graded and put on display or taken home.
That's it.
Take, for example, the case of a bridge design and testing activity. Once all of the bridges have been destructively tested and are in pieces, wouldn't it be nice if Rosalinda and Elisa, having learned from observing all of the tests, could redesign and rebuild their bridge? Wouldn't that result in a deeper understanding of the concepts upon which the activity is based?
The problem is that this is very time-consuming. After the students have completed and tested their solutions, what time is left to go through the process again? And how many students will continue to be motivated as they repeat the same activity?
One answer may be reengineering. Denis Howe (2003) offered this two-part definition of reengineering: "The examination and modification of a system to reconstitute it in a new form; and the subsequent implementation of the new form."
Reengineering is also evident in ITEA's Standards for Technological Literacy. For example, "iteration" is emphasized in Standard 11 (see Table 1): Students "should learn how to use repetition and recurrence--'do it over again'--techniques to obtain the desired solution to a problem. Throughout the entire design process, students should work to improve the designed solutions" (ITEA, 2000/2002, p. 118).
Other related topics in the standards include product lifecycles (Standards 1, 5, 19); the development of products and technologies (7, 10), and societal and human factors that change design requirements overtime (1, 4, 6, 9).

Increasing the Role of Feedback
Almost every K-8 technology activity includes feedback. A teacher, looking over a student's shoulder, asks a question or makes a suggestion. Group members "borrow" ideas from other groups or discuss each other's solutions. Students examine materials before using them. But feedback is usually restricted to the "design" and "making" phases. Figure 1a is an illustration of the standard components of a technology activity for Grades K-8. These three components--design, make, and show--are roughly analogous to the input-process-output paradigm often included in middle-school technology textbooks (Figure 1b).

Adding Feedback and Redesign to the Activity Flow
Technology teachers generally view the input-process-output paradigm as being necessarily incomplete. A step toward completion is the inclusion of a "feedback" component. Although the universal systems model is usually presented as a closed loop, in K-8 technology education it is more usual to include feedback and redesign as additional steps before the final product is "shown" to the class or submitted to the teacher for grading.
Ideally, under this linear model, a student's redesign would be informed by feedback he or she received from testing or from a teacher or peer.
Patricia Hutchinson pioneered the use of the "design loop" in technology education (e.g., Hutchinson, 2002; Todd, Todd, & McCrory, 1996; Hutchinson & Karsnitz, 1994). A simplified version of the design loop, Figure 3, is the basis for reengineering. Here the activity is never done; when a product is designed, produced, or redesigned, it becomes the input for further development.

Developing a Reengineering Activity
As illustrated in Figure 3, technology activities based on reengineering require a substantial level of feedback. They also require a substantial amount of time. What follows is an example of how one activity evolved through several stages to include reengineering.
Stage 1: The "One-Shot" Activity. In a "one-shot" technology activity, students are challenged to solve a problem with certain materials and within certain parameters. Before building a final solution, students often sketch several designs, and they may inspect or assess different materials before finalizing their bill of materials. They then submit their final solution for assessment, either via a physical test or a teacher-scored rubric.
An example of a "one-shot" activity is the Fog Catcher challenge, that Theresa Greenwood, Jim Kirkwood, and the author first implemented in Theresa's Muncie, Indiana classroom in 1993 (Kirkwood & Foster, 1994). Fog catchers are used in Chile and elsewhere to collect clean drinking water. They are simple devices, resembling oversized volleyball nets, with a gravity-based water-delivery system. We gave the third graders a specific problem: Using readily-available materials, build a working model of a fog catcher to be tested by placing it in front of a tea kettle. Students were allowed multiple tests of their devices after they had selected their materials. They recorded their results, then moved on to other fog-related activities.
Reengineering happens after a technological solution has been developed, tested, and analyzed. Too often, however, we have don't have the time to have children work through multiple design cycles. There's also the possibility that repeated iterations of the same activity could get boring for K-8 students. Thus, the "one-shot" activity is understandably common in technology education. But there are at least two activity levels in which feedback and redesign play an increasingly important role. Table 2 compares these different degrees to which feedback can be incorporated into technology activities.
Stage 2: Inquiry-Based Research and Testing. Ten years later, in 2003, Alan Riggs and the author used the fog-catcher idea in an attempt to integrate science and technology objectives in three third-grade classrooms in Manchester, Connecticut. We made two major changes to the activity as it was conducted in Indiana. First, in an attempt to more authentically simulate fog, we used a cool-mist humidifier.
Second, a separate research and testing phase was added. Since the actual material used for fog catchers resembles a screen, Alan secured multiple samples of three dozen different screens from a local supplier. We then organized the children into teams to methodically test the screens. As a whole, the 60 third-graders identified the three best screens. The activity then proceeded similarly to the 1993 version.
Since we planned to use this same activity with the same teachers the following year, we had the students write reports detailing which design solutions worked--and why.
Stage 3: Reengineering. In the fall of 2004, we took another step. Since the prior year's third graders had already tested the screen samples, we used their data and recommendations with the new third graders. This didn't reduce the amount of class time required, however. The activity in 2004 took place on ten different dates over a one-month period, including two days in the computer laboratory. The activity was structured as it had been in 2003. Each third grader learned about the problem, and most drew increasingly developed solutions as their understanding deepened (this year they also used Apple Works Draw for some of their design work).
They also tested a more refined range of screens. But many of the steps they took were based on work done by students the year before.
Most of the 2004 third graders remembered seeing last year's third graders working on the project in the school cafeteria. Several had friends or siblings who had made a fog catcher. Since some collective prior knowledge existed, it made sense to share the prior year's findings with the students so that everyone had access to the same background information. The students were now reengineering the prior year's designs. It didn't appear to matter to these classes that they hadn't collected the initial data themselves.
Although this iteration of the fog catcher activity seemed to be the most successful yet, we made a conscious trade-off: the students' creativity was constrained compared to the previous year, when the third graders had a more open-ended challenge. Since these classes do another technology activity later in the school year, this was less of a concern.

Other Benefits of Reengineering
Using reengineering in the classroom requires the subject-matter integration in two ways. First, the increased class time devoted to the project reduces time available to focus exclusively on other subjects. Second, student motivation could deteriorate if the class simply repeated the same steps (design, make, test, redesign, remake, retest...) for several weeks. In the 2004 activity, integrating language arts requirements provided enough variety to keep motivation high.
The quality of student lab reports and drawings seemed to increase when they knew that future classes would need to use their notes. This also increased the authenticity of the activity as a whole--and the writing assignments--in the eyes of the students.
This is also true of college students in an introductory technology course I teach for both non-technology and technology majors. We do the traditional egg-drop activity, but with a twist. The students have one hour to make their first egg container, which we drop from the top of a six-story garage. They then have several weeks to design and build their second container. Among the research materials at their disposal are the successful designs of prior students. Each year I challenge the students to "reengineer" the egg container to use slightly less material. Their lab reports for this activity are almost always the most detailed, clear, and thoughtful--because they know future students may read the information they're sharing.
In the "House of Cards" engineering activity, David Miner, a middle-school technology teacher in East Lyme, Connecticut, has his students use the design loop multiple times (Miner, 2004). Students are required to develop and test a finished solution, then collect more data and repeat the process. They record their research, designs, and findings in detail in a journal, which is the basis for evaluation. Students also have an additional motivating factor:

Prior to the expansion of this activity to include research activities, the school record was 95 pounds--a record held for many years. Through research and development, testing and redesign of the houses, the new school record was increased...the new record, held by a fifth grader, is now 200 pounds! (Miner, 2004, p. 7)

Final Thoughts
Although it is time-consuming, and reflects only one example of technological research and development, reengineering is an approach to technology education that can complement other methods, such as creative problem-solving, enterprise, and exploratory research.
In many cases, just implementing a technology activity in a general-education classroom is an important accomplishment. A "one-shot" activity may be a perfect fit in many cases. But once the activity has been implemented, and once data has been collected by several groups of students, reengineering may be a meaningful way to increase the authenticity of an activity, integrate it with other subjects, and motivate students to perform and understand at higher levels.
ADDED MATERIAL
Patrick N. Foster is an associate professor at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, CT. He can be reached via e-mail at FosterP@mail.ccsu.edu.
Table 2. Comparison of Activity Levels.

Stage           Testing and redesign of solution                Advantages
"One-Shot"  Since testing is the final step, there is       Requires less time to plan, and
Activity        usually no focus on redesign.                   less class time to implement.
Inquiry-Based   The final solution is still only tested at the  More authentically models how
Research and    end of the activity, but student designs        engineers work; strong connec-
Testing         are informed by data collected from             tion with inquiry-based science
                material testing earlier in the activity,       standards.
Reengineering   After a complete "design cycle," the        Demonstration of the impor-
                product is redesigned from scratch based        tance of design; students expe-
                on findings from earlier, completed             rience the entire "design loop."
                designs.

Stage           Disadvantages
"One-Shot"  Little chance to experiment or
Activity        improve designs.
Inquiry-Based   A lot more planning and class
Research and    time are required.
Testing
Reengineering   Class time is increased
                further; student is creativity
                constrained.

Figure 1a. Standard activity components.
Figure 1b. Standard activity flow.
Figure 2. Activity with feedback added.
Figure 3. Reengineering.

References
Foster, P.N., E Kirkwood, J.J. (1994). Fog catcher: Kids don't care if it's low tech. Technological Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Students 6(3), 16-20.
Howe, D. (2003). Free on-line dictionary of computing. Available: http://dictionary.reference.com
Hutchinson, J., E Karsnitz, J. (1994). Design and problem-solving in technology. Albany: Delmar Publishers, Inc.
Hutchinson, P. (2002). Children designing E engineering: Contextual learning units in primary design and technology. Journal of Industrial Teacher Education 39(3), 122-145.
International Technology Education Association. (2000/2002). Standards for technological literacy: Content for the Study of Technology. Reston, VA: Author.
Miner, D. (2004). Engineering is elementary. Technology and Children 8(4), 6-7.
Todd, R. D., Todd, K. R., & McCrory, D. L. (1996). Introduction to design and technology. Cincinnati: Thomson.

Table 1. Selected STL Benchmarks (ITEA, 2000/2002, p. 103; 118-119)
Standard 9: Students will develop an understanding of engineering design.
Benchmark topics for Grades 6-8:
Iteration
Brainstorming
Modeling, testing, evaluating, and modifying
Standard 11: Students will develop abilities to apply the design process.
Benchmark topics for Grades 3-5:
Collecting information
Visualizing a solution
Test and evaluate solutions
Improve a design