Designing Innovators and Problem Solvers

The first step on this journey was for all teachers to work through the technological design process alongside their class on a problem identified by students. When this was decided, as a teacher my mind raced. What could Rm 1 do? What is a simple problem that affects everyone in Rm 1? Some students identified a lack of stationery on tables and belongings left lying around as a problem. These weren’t suggestions that the class as a whole felt strongly about.

Then came the lightbulb moment when Peyton went to get some headphones and said she couldn’t. When asked why, she said that they were tangled. I was sure the problem couldn’t be that bad. When I checked, the problem was worse than I could ever have imagined. Every pair of headphones was tangled up!

Before we could think of a solution, our immediate concern was untangling the headphones. That's when the team of untanglers went to work. They struggled so much that Peyton’s original problem became everyone’s problem. Untanglers worked in shifts, spending most of a day trying to untangle them with limited success. I had to spend hours during the weekend finishing the job.

The first step in our learning journey to solve our problem involved 'asking' some tough questions, such as how did things get this bad? This is what some students thought.

Next, we had to consider what constraints we had to fixing this problem? I told the class we had a 2 week time limit, that the classroom walls could not be damaged, and that whatever we made had to be at a low cost..

We combined the next two steps in the design process. Step 2  is ‘imaging’. This is where students had to think of solutions, brainstorm ideas, and choose the best one. Step 3 is ‘planning’. Once students had their idea, they needed to plan what they’d do by drawing diagrams and thinking about materials.

With so many ideas, I introduced the ideas of ‘reflecting’ at all stages of the design process at any time. This involves continually evaluating your design to identify changes that could lead to improvement. To introduce students to this, they had to evaluate ideas by identifying positives and negatives of each design against constraints they identified earlier.

After this we looked at all our ideas and thought a good design needed to have strong hooks. Velcro ones probably wouldn’t be strong enough, so screw in hooks would be better. That means they’d need to be screwed into wood. We weren’t allowed to screw anything into walls, so Faith, Aria, and Mackenzie’s idea of having standing shelves guided us to our final design needed to be free standing.

Before the class could move forward as designers with their clearer ideas, we needed to address another constraint, materials. So, we had to see what materials we could find in a hurry, that didn’t cost much. Luckily, on my way home I searched the streets of Taupō streets and found some free pallets outside Pak ‘n’ Save. Mitre 10 Mega also had some off cuts of chipboard they sold me for $10.00. The hospice shops and the dump shop had different treasures that could be used as hooks that they sold for a total of $40.00.

After groups saw materials that were on offer, they reflected on their past designs and revisited the imaging and planning stages. The biggest challenge for groups was working out how to make their design freestanding and safe so it wouldn’t fall over on anyone and injure them. Other groups had difficulty drawing their design ideas 3 dimensionally to show this. When reminded about the new ideas we were working towards, groups were able to problem solve and explain what they would do.

As drawing 3-dimensional designs was a challenge, some groups decided to create prototypes of their design using pieces of cardboard to cut to a smaller scale of the materials available. That way, it would be easier for other students to visualise what their ideas are to help decide upon the best design.

The next step on our journey as innovators is to decide on the best design for step 4 in the design process: create. We decided to combine the best elements from across different designs. As we created, we were thinking about step 5, improve. Is there any way we could improve it, we wondered? We soon realised that we had more space than we thought, so what could we do with that space? This is what some students thought.

We integrated these wonderful  ideas into our final design. So what started as a wall to hang headphones became much more thanks to Room 1 innovators and problem solvers. I wonder what innovative ideas they’ll come up with next? Please look at the photos from the creating phase of our design journey as students worked with the tools.