So this past month I have been spending my free time researching and playing with the technology that will be used to complete my project. I have been slowly introducing the core and foundational concepts and tools that the students will be using. I found that one of my most necessary steps was to go back and look over my project proposal and analyze what skills and tech the students will need to successfully complete their games. My mind is a little messy, but here is a visual representation of my brainstorming. Students have continued to work with block coding with a variety of coding platforms, so that they can see real world changes as a result of their coding. Students have made and demonstrated programs that play games with their BBC Micro:Bits (beating heart and rocks, paper, scissors) from tutorials. And have revamped those programs to create a die (a program that will randomly output a number from 1 to 6 when it is shaken) for the use with a game. Design thinkingThe first, and most important foundational skill and concept, aside from content area knowledge, is what the students will be using to "CREATE" (or Design) their final projects: the Engineering Design Process. Having an explicit framework to help plan, design, and prototype their projects is a powerful tool in creating solutions to problems.
In introducing the Engineering design process, I looked to the Stanford Design Thinking model, where central to the process is building an empathy towards the user and a robust understanding of the context, end user and team members. I chose this model to support my middle school learners because they need a lot of scaffolding to help them develop empathy for others and work well with teams of people they maybe haven't chosen. While going through my normal month of lab safety and scientific method lessons, I also introduced the Engineering Design Process explicitly as a process of science. I focused on the lesson that Scientific method answers questions about how the world works, and the the EDP helps scientists design solutions for problems that they have discovered. In our class we have put the theory about design thinking to good use, implementing "design thinking challenges" that have cross curricular applications. I will post some of those lessons under the resource section.
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April 2019
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