Getting Students to a Getting Students to a Question and Idea

Question and Idea Through Through

Design ThinkingDesign Thinking

Presented by

Amanda Alonzo

The Nueva School

Objectives:0Identify key components of design thinking

0Experience the power of design thinking

0Analyze quality of student work developed through design thinking

Agenda:

1. Introduction to design thinking

2. Try it!

3. How I used it

4. Examples of student work

5. Questions

Interview about their air transportation experience to get to ISEF.

The Exercise

The Exercise

What does the person you interviewed need?

It can’t be an physical object or solution yet… -Could you put it in a blender? Then it isn’t a need.

For example:Amanda needs a reminder on her phone to tell her when the plane is boarding so as to not miss her flight.-Not good

Amanda needs a way not miss her flight, so as to decrease her anxiety while traveling.-Better

Amanda needs to decrease her anxiety while traveling so as to reach her destination excited to be there.-Best

• Then share brainstorm with team or mentors

• Organize ideas into groups

• Talk through ideas and expand elaborate

The Exercise

The challenge: Think of the worst idea ever

Propose ideas to make the worst air transportation experiences

you can imagine.

CATCH: Everyone is going to act like these ideas are the BEST ideas

ever!

Rules for Brainstorming

1) Defer judgment

2) Encourage wild ideas

3) Build on the ideas of others

4) Stay focused on the topic

5) One conversation at a time

6) Be visual

7) Go for quantity

Design activity = Project based learning

Design is humanistic, observational, iterative.

Designers care about impacting their world.

What my kids did…

1) Shared experience of traveling to Costa Rica for ten days. 2) Assignment before hand…

a) Research paper about a cause of the decline on Leatherback sea turtles (Deep Dive)3) Assignment while there…

a) Write down observations and questions in a paper notebookb) Talk to people that they didn’t know and ask a lot of questions

3) When we got back…a) Use their notebook to look for needsb) Use design thinking to propose a project (technical design,

experimental design, or social design) that the current 9th graders could do next year when they go to Costa Rica that will address a need they saw. (However, many ended up wanting to implement the project themselves instead of giving it away!)

AND THE RESULT WAS…

NEED PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

Adult turtle diseases -Experiment to measure egg pore size-Experiment to track hatchlings at the nest to determine if nests are the cause-Chemical engineering of new antibiotic to apply directly to eggs when being laid

Monitoring the beach -Installation of cameras-Quad-copter which can be flown and monitored by citizen scientists

Gray water disposal -Developing a gray water system at our school-Increasing portability with carbon nanotubes

Crocodile monitoring -multipurpose data collection device to attach to tourist boats -experiment to assess crocodile offspring can live in higher salinity areas

Hatchling communication data

-wrote code to identify particular sounds in massive amounts of recording to identify communication patterns-developed a new microphone that decreases background sound so focus on hatchling noises-experiment to assess how noise pollution affects nest success rate

Public Awareness -T-shirt campaign like Gap “Red” campaign-Original score and lyrics about the turtles-Conservation curriculum for Costa Rica locals

Each of those solutions is a team of three or fewer students wanting to

make an impact.

Each one of those solutions is a STEM research project waiting to

happen!

(except for the social projects)