(gentle upbeat music)

Hi, I'm Aimee, and in this video, we're going to be talking about the engineering notebook. We're gonna talk about what it is, what you should record in your engineering notebook, and why you should use an engineering notebook.

So, let's answer the first question. What is an engineering notebook? Well, it's a place to keep notes, a place to record your progress and your process as you're working on a project. You'll be using the engineering notebook throughout the course of these STEM labs.

What should you record in your engineering notebook? Well, most importantly, you're going to be recording your iterative process. Whether you're iterating on a design of a robot, working your way through a coding problem, changing your build, or making a game strategy, you should record what you've done, the changes that you make, and the results of those changes so that you can go back and reference this data later.

We do provide images, especially in the practice sections of the lab, where you can take them and use them in your engineering notebook, but you don't have to use those images. You could use them simply as a jumping-off point. You want to make the engineering notebook yours. Whether you're recording written notes, sketches and drawings, cutting and pasting something into your engineering notebook, or perhaps creating a graph or a chart, the idea is that you need to be able to go back and use it to reference your data. It doesn't have to be beautiful, but it does need to be functional.

All right, that brings me to this question: why use an engineering notebook? Well, you're going to use it so you can make data-based decisions. Whether you're iterating on code, working on your robot's build, or creating a game strategy, this is a place where you're recording your data so that you have it there when you need it. One area in which this is definitely going to be helpful is when you're working with your team to come up with a game strategy when you're about to compete in a classroom competition. You can use the information in your engineering notebook to help you build the best possible strategy for the game.

In real life, engineers use engineering notebooks as they go through their design process. They record what did and what didn't work. They record things in a way so that other engineers can either verify or replicate what their project was. So when you're working on this engineering notebook, you're actually practicing a skill that might be useful in a future career. No two engineering notebooks are going to be alike.

I hope you enjoy setting up your engineering notebook and using it throughout the course of these labs for robot design, VEX code projects, and game strategies. Have fun, make it your own. And we'll see you here again in another video.

(gentle upbeat music)