Design Development

Today, I was talking to my Year 8 class about design development. It is a part of the design process that students always have problems with. They do one or two design then do not want to do any more. They say they "like" the one they have done and want that one. They are scared of doing any more that they might not like. They are basically scared of failing. Students always want everything on their design sheets to be "perfect". I showed them some of the my design development example sheets that I have done for my senior classes and explain there is always designs you really like, some ok ones and lots you think are terrible. This is normal.

We then moved on to how the students take on their sports training.

• They do skills training to get better at the main game
• They don't go out there and immediately think they should be great at it without giving it time and effort.
• They listen to advice about how to improve and do those things.
• They practice ... again and again and again.
• They don't think that time spent on these skills and training as wasted time.
• When they fail, they try again till they get better.

I then drew a quick concept design on the board and said we were going to treat that design like me going out on the rugby field with a ball.

• I will be hopeless, I can't kick straight, throw very well or run very far.
• I will need training, skills, practice and someone to show me how to improve.

This first design idea needs training too...

• It needs to improve
• It needs them to tell it how to improve - they are it's trainer
• It needs to practice and get better slowly
• It needs to repeat in order to improve

The students have been learning how to use TinkerCad to design stands for mobile phones that can be 3D printed. I want them to develop the design they have done on Tinkercad and do changes and improvements. Screen shots need to be taken while they do this to record the changes made and these screen shots put onto a Google slide presentation.

This is my example ... I started with a very basic idea which was a block with a slot in it - it needed serious training!!!
The last slide here shows an addition from Thingiverse. The students know about this website so I wanted to show that they could use things from there as long as they combine it with ideas and builds of their own and not just use something straight from there.

Here are two examples from today, which shows how the students are starting to change little elements of their design at a time and see what the effects are. (I have made copies of the students work so I can remove the names)