These technical briefs focus on manufacturing on a small-scale. It is an important livelihood for many people in the developing world and businesses are usually run by a family or a small group within the same community.

Technical briefs are documents produced by Practical Action which are freely available...

Sunday has been working in manufacturing since coming to England in 1991, beginning at Mars Confectionary as a Factory Operator. He then moved to GSK as a submission...

This collection of posters are themed around ‘Manufacturing the Future’. The posters can be used to help inform students about the cutting-edge technologies and exciting careers available in UK manufacturing. Topics include: * Astrium - space engineering * True Snowboards - snowboard design and production *...

In this activity from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, pupils make a model of a sail boat from craft sticks. They will then test their model to see if it floats.

This activity could be used to teach about making models and assembly techniques and introduce the history of marine engineering in...

This activity focuses on promoting a product to a particular target user group. Teamwork, creativity and entrepreneurial skills are required to design, brand and market a new Nintendo Wii product. ‘Make your pitch!’ provides students with an opportunity to explore and...

This collection of activities provides a series of lessons linked to computing using the context of Mars exploration. Children learn about algorithms, debugging, flow charts, repeat loops, decision trees, and how images and data are relayed. They find out about search engines, the reliability of information found...

The Mars Safari Education Pack is designed to leave primary school children feeling like they’ve explored the Red Planet! Working in small groups, children design and build their own ExoMars rover, analyse ‘Martian’ soil samples, safely navigate the Rover across the surface of Mars and make a solar light that only...

This collection provides 4 units of work linked to Design and Technology, which explore the need for exploration robots, how they work, how their systems collect data and an understanding of the specialised materials and mechanisms they use. All activities centre around the ExoMars Mission and the Rosalind Franklin...

Aimed at the 11-14 age group, this is a unit of six one-hour design and technology lessons to develop an understanding of how systems on exploration robots are combined and collect data. Students are given a design brief to build their own model rover, experientially, to function in simulated Martian conditions....

This resource provides a series of 1 hour lessons designed to help children understand the need for exploration robots and learn about how they function. They are based around the European Space Agency’s (ESA) new robotic rover Rosalind Franklin...

This is a unit of three two hour lessons to consolidate understanding of the specialised materials and mechanisms used on exploration robots. Students build or test, or build and test these to develop knowledge and evaluate them.  These resources are aimed at the 14-16 age group.  The context is focussed on the...

This resource provides a series of lessons designed to help children understand the need for exploration robots and learn about how they work. The activities link mostly to D&T with a science context, though some of the activities are more focussed on learning in English.

The activities are:

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Students watch a car production line to demonstrate mass production taking place. Details are given on the characteristics of mass production, and how it can be applied to engineered products. Students consider how they could describe batch production and its advantages and disadvantages. Students may begin to...

This video looks at the different grades of steel used in the frame design of a Brompton bicycle, typically steel tube and steel sheet. Designers consider several criteria when choosing materials for a folding bicycle, including strength, weight...