Design Talking with Intermediates

Today with my Intermediate Technology class, I decided to approach the start of the designing process in a different way.
We are going to design toys and games that make you think and the first activity that we did was to look at existing products to see what you could buy at the moment. Example blog post here showing what we did. ( I am putting everything we do in the Y9 and Intermediate classes on tis sample blog so they can refer to it to keep them on track and to catch up if they need to - blog post here )

I put them into pairs today and we put a list on the board of games that they play on paper
hangman, noughts and crosses, connect the dots, pictionary and battleships.
Each team had to choose a couple of them and spend some time playing them together.
There was lots of giggling, checking for things online and shouts of "i won"!
I then asked them to have a discussion with each other and come up with ways to make the games they have just played 3D. The ideas had to be able to be played with physical pieces that you move around and not drawn on paper. they could make notes and draw as they talked.



I loved walking round and listening to them. They were so focussed with the task they were asked to do. As a graphics teacher, I LOVED the ideas being drawn, talked about, scribbled out, changed, argued over. laughed about ... They were not bothered about being fussy over their paper work, it was all about the idea and working it out. This is EXACTLY what designing is supposed to be about. Where do they start to get so fussy that every sheet of work has to be perfect? My seniors drive me crazy over this, to the point where I have to physically restrain them from tearing pages from their sketchbooks! How can I encourage my seniors to be more like these teams this morning? Totally focussed on the ideas and not overthinking everything and stressing. We can clean up drawing styles and skills later.

We then sat together round the front table and shared ideas.
I wrote these ideas up on the board and asked questions to get them to think further.

It was a very productive session doing design work as teams. 

Questions for me ....

How can I build more team work into the design process

How can I get my senior students to work like these teams today? 

If you have any ideas while reading this I would really welcome some feedback in the comments.

ISTE 2018 - Day 5 - Employ Design Thinking with 3D Printing While Learning to Code

There is a skills gap where people need work and the industry needs people.
They run toolkit’s through design thinking not through apps etc.
#isteliustem
Find problems and then solve them with the design thinking process.
People focused - societal and cultural problems
Give students a scenario and they have to work out the problem themselves.
Virtual crash course
dschool.stanford.edu/dgift/
You need a beginners mind in the design thinking process.
1. The interview
2. Dig deeper - what are your questions - practical and social - don’t come with questions with answers already in mind. This questioning part is critical - how can we ask the right questions
3. Capture findings - fast ideas - cover the tables with roll paper / big paper so students can just write and draw on every surface while they are thinking.

Rapid prototyping is a game changer with this process.
It alloCws anyone with access to a printer to become a prototyper.

Cad competency needs building so this process is smooth and there is not a jolt / stop / problem in the middle.
Build cad skills based on something that exists not while having to think about designing as well to start with.
Reverse engineering what you see - really good for skills building
BlocksCAD - coding based design app for 3D printing.


On Tinkercad, click on edit grid and change the workplace size to be the size of the bed in the 3D printer.
scribble tool is freehand.

Blockcad3d.com
Just start to build - don’t have to log in
Do a snowman build to get skills.

Gcode
Tells you what the print is doing step by step.
The slicer gets its time and amount of plastic values from the gcode.

Link to resources