We designed towers that would become a tourist attraction for an allocentric or psychocentric tourist. We explored a mixture of S.T.E.M. and design thinking. The S.T.E.M concept linked into the class's geometry learning, by looking at the strength of different shapes (e.g. Is a triangle stronger than a rectangle?) and how we could use this knowledge to make our designs better!
My biggest hesitation to include elements of S.T.E.M into design thinking was that the creative side of design thinking would be lost. Including the S.T.E.M element using a flipped learning approach worked a treat as the kids went and watched the video to prepare themselves for the tower building experience. Sparking in them ideas like the use of triangles to make their towers strong while they were ideating.
My biggest hesitation to include elements of S.T.E.M into design thinking was that the creative side of design thinking would be lost. Including the S.T.E.M element using a flipped learning approach worked a treat as the kids went and watched the video to prepare themselves for the tower building experience. Sparking in them ideas like the use of triangles to make their towers strong while they were ideating.
Ideating on a large paper worked a treat. Some real collaboration started to happen, more than just "working together". Everyone in the groups ideas became important and needed to be listened to and included. Miss L's group all contributed ideas and then took the best bits from each design to create their final ideation.
Here the ideations from each member of the team and below the final ideation which incorporates the ideas of the whole group.
And the prototype, created with newspaper and sellotape.
Miss L, used Google Draw to create a technical drawing of their teams latest design. It is simply stunning!
Miss L writes,
"I made my tower for an allocentric tourist. An allocentric tourist is someone who likes insane activities like bungee jumping, extreme roller coasters and other insane life or death activities. To show my empathy for an allocentric tourist I made a 35 feet tower with a bungee jump, a slide going down the top of the tower, a swing hanging from the side of the tower and last but not least a ladder starting from the bottom of the tower to the top."
Her use of this digital tool sparked an idea of where to take design thinking next.... I'm thinking Game Froot or Tynkercad, with the year 7/8's next week!
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