LAURA BAIN
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Contact

Diving into Design

18/4/2017

0 Comments

 
It's the first day of Term 2 today and what better way is there to kick it off than with a super fun STEAM challenge?

The Year 6 students have an exciting integrated STEAM unit ahead this term where they will be designing  and building their own solar products. This unit is inspired by Solar Buddies, but that will have to wait until another blog...

The design process and design thinking are going to be a large part of our STEAM unit this week and to get the ball rolling I wanted to give the students a practical way to introduce the design process. The activity I set for the class required them to work in small groups to construct a bridge between two chairs that a Sphero robot could safely traverse. This is not an original idea. Pinterest is full of related lesson ideas and it can also be found in the Sphero Lighting Lab lessons.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Students were provided with a variety of materials including paddle pop sticks, match sticks, fold back clips, pegs, rubber bands and string. A few basic expectations were set regarding the distance their bridge had to span and also that the only place they could use any type of sticky tape or masking tape, was when connecting their construction to the chairs. Students only had twenty minutes to construct their solutions. At the end of the time they tested their designs and recorded their results on their Student Story on Class Dojo.

A post shared by Laura Bain (@larubain) on Apr 19, 2017 at 6:47pm PDT

​I was actually pretty impressed. There were a lot of successful designs in the short time provided and the children had a lot of fun. Following the activity we discussed what happens when we go about designing a solution to a problem. The activity provided a good example for students to base their contributions to the discussion on. Many acknowledged that they talked with their team about the best materials for the project, design requirements, before testing a few different construction ideas. A few identified that time to study real world examples of bridge design would help them to build a better bridge. 

The activity provided me with the opportunity to highlight a couple of key thoughts I felt were important the children leave the lesson with:
1. A failed design is not really a failure. It's part of the design process and provides an opportunity to reflect on the design and improve it.
2. The design process is often improved with collaboration. Working as a team, consulting with specialists and building on shared ideas usually results in even better outcomes and productivity.
​The Design Process we will be using was developed by the Queensland Department of Education and Training for their C2C Units, available to Australian educators via Scootle. I finished the lesson by introducing this and asking the students to imagine the bridges they could create with a little more time and guidance from the Design Process. We will be using this process to frame our unit this term.

What model do you use with students to facilitate the design process? There are some really great models out there. I'd love to hear what others are using. Leave a comment below!
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Laura's Blog

    Read all about my thoughts on teaching in the 21st Century, my experiences with technology in the classroom, running a Maker Space, launching STEAM and Design Thinking with students, coding, robotics and much more!
    Keep up to date by subscribing below!


    Email Updates

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    RSS Subscription

    Click the button below:
    Subscribe

    RSS Feed


    Archives

    July 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    August 2016
    June 2016
    June 2015
    November 2014


    Categories

    All
    Apple
    Applications
    Apps
    AR
    Assessment
    Badges
    Binary
    Class Dojo
    Code Club
    Coding
    Computer Science
    Devices
    Digital Ink
    Digital Technologies Curriculum
    ESafety
    Events
    Forms
    Holidays
    ICT Capabilities
    Ideas
    Leadership
    Learning Environments
    Lego
    LittleBits
    Microsoft
    Mindfulness
    NAPLAN
    National Science Week
    OneNote
    Ozobots
    Reporting
    Robots
    Science
    Social Media
    Sphero
    STEAM
    STEM
    Teacher Tools
    Tips

Home
About
Contact
Technology will never replace great teachers, but technology in the hands of great teachers is transformational  -  George Couros
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Contact