As mentioned in previous posts, design thinking has been embraced by the Lower School faculty, and students at all grade levels have been engaging in projects that feature design thinking (both big and small). While all of this was happening, it came to pass that there were some capital projects for maintenance upgrades on deck for the Lower School that would be completed over the summer. This presented a unique opportunity to the leadership of the Lower School to actually create a "design center" in part of the campus.
The Division Head began by drafting out the possibilities, and then meeting individually with several folks who would be involved in the process. He then vetted the idea with the Lower School leadership team and got their approval. Finally, the plan was shared with the full faculty at a faculty meeting in early February, and once again, it was met with approval. Several discussions with capital project managers and facility developing personnel ensued, and it appears that starting in the 2015-2016 school year, our Lower School will have a true "design center" on its campus!
The way this will be achieved is to take several classes and programs that had been spread across campus and move them into more natural adjacencies. For example, the space where the design center will be currently houses our library, two science classes, a junior kindergarten class, and a language class. The library and science rooms will stay. The language class will move to be near the other language teachers, which means our art room can move into the area with our library and science rooms. The junior kindergarten class will also relocate into a better adjacency with other junior kindergarten rooms, which will allow our wood shop program to also move into the building.
As a result, our art, wood shop, science rooms, and library will all be in one facility together, which we'll be referring to as the "Design Center" for Lower School. These adjacencies will allow students to more easily engage in interdisciplinary projects that incorporate classroom learning, science, and art/design. Very exciting!
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Thursday, February 12, 2015
7th Grade Plantastic Voyage!
As mentioned in the post about our faculty visit to the Lighthouse Creativity Lab, one of the newly redesigned lessons that emerged from our visit belonged to a science teacher in our Middle School. Sergina Bach was able to fully redesign a traditional lesson about photosynthesis into a comprehensive design thinking experience - and when she returned, her entire 7th grade science team enthusiastically adopted the project across all 7th grade science classes.
The project was called "The Plantastic Voyage" and it was created to apply student learning about photosynthesis and plants by having them create a means to transport and grow plants during a mission to Mars, as well as creating a way to establish the plants once on Mars. Sergina took this project, integrated her new learning about Tinkercad, iterative thinking, and student-centered design processes, and set students off on an engaging and fun design thinking project.
Sergina and her colleagues bravely ventured into the world of Tinkercad - a first for our School. Tinkercad is a free software program that allows for 3d drafting using simple tools. It is very intuitive, generally speaking, and the students appeared to like working with the program. While we did not have the ability to 3d print student products prior to the final presentations, we discovered that the students enjoyed the digital drafting process enormously, and we saw them iterate their designs from words to basic drawings to 3d renderings, each time with improvements to the design. This project definitely highlighted that 3d printers would be something that would greatly enhance design thinking projects, and so we will be discussing ways to integrate these on both of our campuses.
During the student work time on this project, I was able to visit all classrooms and personally experience the students' enthusiasm and excitement as they imagined, designed, and created their solutions. One one memorable visit, I was treated to having students give me a practice run of their project presentations, after which they asked for feedback. Not only was it great to see their enthusiasm in their presentations, I was surprised when they so openly asked for critique of their work, and more surprised when they thoughtfully considered the feedback given. In another class, I was treated to a student volunteering to get feedback from the full class on their prototype presentation. The reason I was surprised by all of these things is that my observations denote a turning point in terms of student process of creation in their projects - not so long ago students would have finished their project and been... done. Now, they approach their work as more iterative process, and before being finished, they test out their work and seek feedback.
In a couple of cases, we were able to 3d render the student's thinking. Here's a 3d print of a student's concept for a plant incubator that would keep plants alive on the space ship and on Mars too:
The project was called "The Plantastic Voyage" and it was created to apply student learning about photosynthesis and plants by having them create a means to transport and grow plants during a mission to Mars, as well as creating a way to establish the plants once on Mars. Sergina took this project, integrated her new learning about Tinkercad, iterative thinking, and student-centered design processes, and set students off on an engaging and fun design thinking project.
Sergina and her colleagues bravely ventured into the world of Tinkercad - a first for our School. Tinkercad is a free software program that allows for 3d drafting using simple tools. It is very intuitive, generally speaking, and the students appeared to like working with the program. While we did not have the ability to 3d print student products prior to the final presentations, we discovered that the students enjoyed the digital drafting process enormously, and we saw them iterate their designs from words to basic drawings to 3d renderings, each time with improvements to the design. This project definitely highlighted that 3d printers would be something that would greatly enhance design thinking projects, and so we will be discussing ways to integrate these on both of our campuses.
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| On the left, a student's hand-drawn iteration. On the right, their vision realized in TinkerCad. |
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| Students loved the ability to create CAD models and also prototype models for this project! |
In a couple of cases, we were able to 3d render the student's thinking. Here's a 3d print of a student's concept for a plant incubator that would keep plants alive on the space ship and on Mars too:
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