Design Thinking

Design thinking involves five stages being discovery: how to approach a problem, interpretation: how to apply learning, ideation: what do I have to create, experimentation: how to build the design, evolution: how to make something better. Creativity is the foundation of design thinking as it, promotes students to be delve into their work whereby they are enacting and developing rather than receiving information from slides or readings (Van Haren, 2010).

Sketch-UP is a 3D modeling software, this technology would be suitable at a primary and secondary level as student as it promotes students to be creative and problem solve designs.

An example of this tool being used in school at a secondary level would be through a woodwork class. Whereby, students are tasked to create cars to race each other that are propelled with C02 cartridges, designed on Sketch-Up.

CO2 propelled car design by Shah Garcia

Creativity is fostered through design thinking whereby students, can have multiple starting points and structures of engagement to engage students to make them feel more comfortable (Van Haren, 2010). Moreover, Wright (2018) makes note that creativity is producing a variety of “solutions, ideas and options” (p.9). In relation to wood-work class students should be offered multiple examples of how to create their cars and be shown examples of aesthetics also shown through real life examples such as Formula 1 cars, drag racing cars and sports cars. Design thinking can also foster a “creative process” where students learn how be innovative (Koehler & Mishra, p.96, 2005). In the case of the woodwork class students should be encouraged to create their own original design whilst incorporating aspects of real-life racing cars.

Limitations

limitations of Sketch-Up is that it is a tool that does not inform the user, meaning it does not instruct what tools would be best suited towards creating specific designs it has to be created from scratch. Moreover, the shareability of the design is apparent in the form of drop-sharing saved files to each other but not more than one person can be logged onto the application therefore students in groups will have to use one computer at a time to design their product.

References

Wright A, G & Jones D, M. (2018). innovation in the elementary classroom. The Technology Teacher, 77(5), 8–13.

Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2005). Teachers Learning Technology by Design. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 21(3), 94–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/10402454.2005.10784518

Van Haren, R. (2010). Engaging learner diversity through Learning by Design. E-Learning (Oxford, England), 7(3), 258–271. https://doi.org/10.2304/elea.2010.7.3.258