Group items tagged

"I have a confession to make.  I hate meetings. Maybe that is not entirely true. I hate bad meetings. You know the ones where you spend a lot of time going round and round in circles, yet seem to accomplish little at the end of the day.  One of those main staples of these meetings has been "brainstorming".  This process is one that has been heralded in not only meetings, but also for "Design Thinking" (here is a document on the techniques os brainstorming in design thinking from Stanford University, Institute of Design). So out of sheer curiosity, I googled "brainstorming is bad" to see what I found (not biased at all I know).  Here are a few of the articles that I read with little snippets from each."

"Project-based learning is not 'doing projects'. PBL is student-driven and specifically open to interpretation to ensure students learn through carrying out a project and not doing a project pre-designed by the teacher. They are driven to answer a 'big' question and carry out their inquiry and design in teams. They are also under pressure to present their results to a third party of some kind. The students decide on how to achieve the goals and are not carrying out teacher-designed tasks."

"3D printing has brought the world some pretty awesome products, but Modio could be one of the coolest we've seen. Modio is an iOS app that lets you design your own "monster robot" from scratch, using a selection of different modules and colors. Once you've finished your amazing design, you can send it to a 3D printer and your toy comes to life, right before your eyes. "

"A creative process that helps you design meaningful solutions in the classroom, at your school, and in your community. The toolkit provides you with instructions to explore Design Thinking."

"Of all the apps that students have shared with me over the years, Foldify is probably my favorite. A few years ago one of my my students used it to design a bunch of characters and buildings that he then printed, colored, and folded according to the Foldify print-out. He then used those characters in a video that he made. In his video he and other students provided the voices for each character. Last year Foldify introduced Foldify Zoo for designing and printing animals. This spring Foldify released Foldify Dinosaurs for designing, printing, and constructing dinosaur models."

"You see it everywhere in K-12. Kindergarteners design toys for their friends to practice empathy, while learning to use a saw and glue-gun along the way. Second graders deepen their understanding of character traits while designing and sewing puppets to represent a character in a folk-tale. In high school physics, students make wind turbines in order to internalize an understanding of how magnetism can create electricity. The "it" I'm referring to is "Making," and simply put, Making is any activity where people create something, often with their hands. I often define Making by looking at what people bring to the Maker Faire, which does include more technical aspects like 3D printing, physical computing and programming. But Making also includes woodworking, growing food, making art and crafts."

"High school social studies teacher Emily Block had used design thinking in her classroom before, but wanted to take it one step farther and have her students learn by making. Through a course at Scarsdale Schools' Teacher Institute (PDF), Emily incorporated a maker experience into her practice and used design thinking to help her manage the process."

"Want to turn your kid into the next Ray Eames or Errol Morris? MoMA Design Store-that wondrous place brimming with all things sleek, modern, and covetable-has you covered. Here are seven tools for engendering the sort of creative play that does wonders for a growing mind."

When you look at your kids playing video games, you might worry they're wasting time and energy passively staring at a screen and pressing buttons. But what if their play time was actually a creative outlet that fostered their imaginations? More and more games, apps, and websites are letting kids as young as kindergartners create anything they can think of -- and it doesn't have to take a ton of time. Even better, most of these tools don't require kids to be skilled programmers or computer experts to design and build creative, entertaining experiences. Whether your kids enjoy creating fun new game elements, editing existing game content, or fully designing their own games from scratch, these programs can help bring their ideas to the screen.

"Imagine spending every day in a physical space designed for people much bigger than you. To wash your hands or get a drink of water, you'd have to drag a chair over to the sink or ask a friend for a boost. Your feet would dangle in mid-air when you sat down and you'd have to crane your neck and stand on tiptoe to read the bulletin board. After the novelty wore off, it's likely that you'd end up feeling uncomfortable, insignificant, and out of place. Unfortunately, this is how many children feel every day in their classrooms. Whether it's because the chairs are too big or too small, the aisles too narrow, the tables too low, or the displays too high, the message is clear: "This room was not made for you." The sad fact is that most classroom spaces are far from ideal. Perhaps they were originally designed and built with little or no consultation with the teachers who would be working in them. Or maybe they were designed for another purpose, or with tight budgetary restrictions. And while teachers probably won't be able to transform an inadequate classroom space into an ideal one, they can make dramatic improvements. So, where to begin? The most obvious place is by thinking about the students. Before moving a single piece of furniture or clearing a wall for a display, learn as much as you can about the particular needs of the children you'll be teaching by talking with families and former teachers. Below are some general guidelines to help you create a physical environment that makes children feel comfortable and significant and that best serves their needs."

Today's classrooms are diverse and inclusive by nature. Differentiation of instruction and assessment and the principles of universal design are now recognized practices for teachers. Both differentiation and universal design provide systematic approaches to setting goals, choosing or creating flexible materials and media, and assessment. To undertake differentiation and universal design, teachers need to be aware of a range of accommodations (multiple means of representation, of expression, and/or of engagement) that may be necessary to help each student in the classroom succeed. These accommodations may take the form of adaptations and/or modifications

"Get the Math is a super website designed to provide teachers and students with multimedia mathematics challenges. I initially reviewed the site when it launched a couple of years ago. Since then the site has expanded. Get the Math put math challenges in the context of the  "real world" scenarios of fashion design, video game design, music production, restaurant management, professional basketball, and movie special effects production."

"Wow, what can we say! This past summer we decided to start a learning space design challenge on ClassroomCribs.com to highlight all of the amazing "cribs" that you have designed for students. Instead of just "aesthetics" we focused this challenge on brain-friendly learning spaces that promoted deep learning and engagement through design. And we were blown away by the response! Over 4,000 educators have joined our Classroom Cribs learning community and many of you sent in videos of your learning space as part of the challenge."

"Tinkering activities provide a powerful way to inspire students' interest, engagement, and understanding in science. The Tinkering Fundamentals course will help educators and enthusiasts develop a practice of tinkering and making. This course will focus on key design elements of high-quality, science-rich tinkering activities, effective facilitation strategies and environmental organization. Watch Intro Video About the Course The Tinkering Fundamentals course will offer educators and enthusiasts an opportunity to develop a practice of tinkering and making.  We see tinkering as a serious endeavor -- one that is generalizable across content and especially good at interweaving disciplines in a way that leads to complex projects and individualized learning opportunities.   Tinkering has recently been introduced into the educational field as a potential driver of creativity, excitement, and innovation in science learning. It is seen by many as an effective means to engage in exploring STEM concepts, practices and phenomena. Tinkering typically blends the high and low tech tools of science along with a strong aesthetic dimension that supports children's (and adults) self expression.  For over a decade, the Exploratorium has been developing science-rich tinkering activities. Working with learning scientists, we have identified a set of design principles and indicators of learning that can help you to integrate tinkering activities into your elementary and middle school science programs. This course will focus on key design elements of high quality science-rich tinkering activities, facilitation strategies, and environmental organization. Selected  tinkering activities will be centered around circuits for this course.  We will review the ways in which tinkering supports science learning through providing opportunities to deepen engagement, intentionality, innovation, collaboration, and understanding. This course will excite you, inspire you, and get you tinkering in

"MakerBot has officially launched its MakerBot PrintShop app, a free iOS-only tool that's designed to assist those of you looking to 3D print your own little trinkets and doodads. That is, of course, assuming that you have one of the company's somewhat-pricey 3D printers. If not, a virtual designer will you forever be."

"Bloom's Taxonomy's verbs-also know as power verbs or thinking verbs-are extraordinarily powerful instructional planning tools. In fact, next to the concept of backwards-design and power standards, they are likely the most useful tool a teacher-as-learning-designer has access to. Why? They can be used for curriculum mapping, assessment design, lesson planning, personalizing and differentiating learning, and almost any other "thing" a teacher-or student-has to do."

"Laura Richardson, who spent 10 years at Frog Design, has boiled it all down into one playful infographic: The Periodic Table of 21st Century Play. It nicely supplements her in-depth 2010 innovation essay for Co.Design, "The Four Secrets of Playtime That Foster Creative Kids. There are 11 play categories, from morphing to questing and from stretching to creating, and subsets of activities in each. "Play is our greatest natural resource in a creative economy," Richardson writes. "Someday, rather than measuring memorization as an indicator of progress, we will measure our children's ability to manipulate (deconstruct and hack), morph (think flexibly and be tolerant of change), and move (think with their hands)."

"3D printing is a very cool technology that has garnered a lot of attention lately. The additive manufacturing process 3D printers use and the software to create 3D models can be extremely confusing. In an attempt to share some information about the 3D printing process Shapeways created a 2D explainer of 3D printing. Introducing students to the world of 3D printing is a great way to get them excited about manufacturing and design. Students are able to see their ideas and creations come to life before their eyes in a very short period of time. One of the main benefits of 3D printing is the ability to rapidly prototype ideas and designs for anything from fashion accessories to the rocket engines produced by industrial printers at NASA. The Shapeways marketplace gives students and teachers the ability to quickly upload designs and have them printed and shipped within weeks. For classrooms without access to expensive 3D printers, this allows students to get in on the exciting action of 3D printing and modeling."