"If you are a teacher and you are trying to explain what you do, say, 'I am a learning designer!' Teachers need to be empowered with a variety of instructional designs to meet the needs of all students. They need to be honored for their expertise to create creative and engaging learning environments. We can re-frame the concept of "teaching" to truly encapsulate all that teachers can and should do!"
"As a learning tool, it has the potential to make a great positive change to learning. The only problem is Apple designed it for individual use. Schools are designed for ( or budgeted for) shared use. "
When TED launched its educational website for younger students last week, I think teachers everywhere realised they had to up their game. The 3-10 minute videos are designed to encourage curiosity and show how the world works using compelling animation and the audible explanations of a gifted teacher. Even if you're not in high school, the videos are sometimes fascinating, sometimes kinda strange, but generally very cool. Here are some of the best videos that are designed to amaze and challenge your brain.
Summary via The Scout Report (April 2012): "The Sumanas Corporation was created in 1994 to help design accurate and interesting products for higher education. Along on the way, they have seen fit to create a range of complementary online animations for students and teachers interested in biology. On this page, visitors will find 37 helpful animations that cover a range of topics. The first two on the site address meiosis and mitosis and they are a good place to start for any student of general biology. Each one of the animations includes audio narration, along with a step-by-step tutorial and a short quiz. Other favorites here include "The Scientific Method" and "Simple Stimuli Trigger Fixed Behaviors" Overall, the site is well-designed and it may pique the curiosity of those who haven't thought much about biology in some time. [KMG]"
An interesting read about what may become important to us in the future
3D printers may become very important to us.
The true potential is when we can design our own remotes, with our our own sense of flair, using design software, and then print in our own homes. Cottage industries might emerge, contests, DIY markets - and all fueled by creativity and inventiveness.
This site has some great suggestions for making beautiful posters. It talks about white space, font, color etc. It has links to hundreds of great examples to look at.
"Inform is a design system for interactive fiction based on natural language. It is a radical reinvention of the way interactive fiction is designed, guided by contemporary work in semantics and by the practical experience of some of the world's best-known writers of IF."
"Monster Exchange is designed to encourage the development of reading and writing skills while integrating Internet technology into the classroom curriculum. Classrooms from a variety of schools worldwide are paired together; the students in each classroom are split into groups, each of which designs an original picture of a monster. The students must then write a description of the monster. The partnered classes then exchange their descriptions via e-mail and the Internet. These students are then challenged to use reading comprehension skills to read the descriptions and translate them into a monster picture. The true challenge involves creating a redrawn picture as close to the original picture as possible without looking at the original and using only the written description of the monster."
might be useful for older students:
Gamestar Mechanic is a game and online community that teaches kids how to design their own games. Designing games builds Systems Thinking, 21st Century Skills, Creative Problem Solving, Art and Aesthetics, Writing and Storytelling, and creates a motivation for STEM learning.