On the March 30 inservice day, our teachers became students again and experienced a hands-on introduction to design thinking, a mindset and approach to learning, collaboration, and problem solving. Using empathetic design thinking along with ideating, prototyping, and testing, Mr. Valence led the “students” through a challenge to create the best container to transport a fragile artifact (an egg in our case!) back from a distant foreign place.
(Mr. Beck drops a design from a lift high up above the gym floor)
With just cardstock, tape, a few straws, and a tissue, the goal was to design the best container that would protect the fragile artifact even when dropped from a few meters above the gym floor. Though most of the initial prototypes needed further adjustments to the design, we learned a lot about design thinking, the process students follow, and the joy of collaboration on a solution!
This activity is a kick off to a long time curricular effort to expand inquiry based instruction into our school. We have targeted science in the lower school and now our technology program to facilitate this effort. Due to the constraints of budgets we have relied on volunteers and partner programs like Four Winds Science Institute to bring inquiry based instruction to our Lower school Science program. This coming year we are reconfiguring the technology program to focus on developing students to become developers versus consumers of technology. Learn more about this effort here.