One of the most powerful features of Miro is its ability to create a public workspace where students can see and interact with each other's work. We’ve really leveraged this and it’s changed the way we are approaching the portfolio.
Read MoreUnpacking Key and Related Concepts in MYP Design
Concepts are what drive our MYP Design curriculum. They establish the conceptual framework in which the teaching and learning takes place. MYP Design units of inquiry must be organized around one of four Key Concepts (KC): Communication, Communities, Development, and Systems; and one or two related concepts. Using this combination, MYP design educators explore and develop some of the conceptual understandings for the unit.
We’ve been looking deeply at the key and related concepts in MYP design and considering how they are connected, and how we might unpack them for students. As part of this process, we identified connections between the concept and the MYP Design Cycle objectives. For example, the concept “communication” has direct connections to how designers communicate with clients and themselves.
Mapping the key concept communication to the MYP Design Cycle criterion.
To be honest, this was the first time we looked for connections between the key concept and the design cycle and it was hugely informative. We were able to make several strong connections and also generate some guiding questions about the role of these concepts in different parts of the design cycle. This has given us a different perspective on how these key concepts relate to the cycle, and also ways in which we can incorporate them into the teaching and learning experiences.
We took a similar approach in looking at the related concepts. These are the key drivers of the inquiry questions, so we looked at how they might connect with the three categories: Factual, Conceptual, and Debatable.
Many of the connections between these concepts and the inquiry questions were informed by conceptual understandings from the DP Design curriculum.
Below is the whole set. They can be downloaded as a PDF and used under a Creative Commons license.
A UCD framework that builds empathy
Empathy is the driving force behind a successful design thinking project. Understanding the needs of the user is the key to successful design.
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Reflecting on Designerly Ways of Knowing
The solution is not simply lying there among the data, like the dog among the spots in the well known perceptual puzzle; it has to be actively constructed by the designers own efforts.
Read MoreResearch for Designers: Using NoodleTools to scaffold inquiry
Research has taken on an important role in design, especially as we direct our students to undertake user centered design (UCD) approaches to their inquiry. Part of our approach in MYP Design incorporates tools such as NoodleTools to plan and organize research, and the user—task–environment framework for analyzing design opportunities. Together, these two tools help students organize their research, identify connections, and synthesize new understandings.
Below you can find a short workshop that I presented to faculty that outlines how we use NoodleTools to develop and support research skills (ATLs) in a design inquiry. You can see an example of that is incorporated as task-specific instruction here.
We are using Noodletools to scaffold the research process for students. After they have identified a source and created an MLA citation, we guide them in using the NoteCard feature to move their thinking from low-order (identifying) to high order (synthesis).
Computational Thinking and the Design Cycle
The concept of Computational Thinking helped me see the teaching of coding in a completely new way. I was struggling to find a way to teach coding from an inquiry perspective, while at the same time ensuring students developed a strong foundation in basic principles. I wanted to avoid the rote teaching and practice of coding language, and instead engage at a deeper level with what coding is.
Framing the learning of coding from the perspective of computational thinking has helped me and my students really understand the essence of learning a computer code. There are several variations of computational thinking, but the one I'm following, and which is closely aligned with the IB computer science model, considers these four concepts:
- Algorithms: Understanding and creating rules
- Pattern recognition:
- Decomposition
- Abstraction
students creating shared understandings of computational thinking concepts
In the teaching of code, I've been emphasizing to students how computational thinking concepts can be applied to other areas of making. I shared the band Wintergaten's Marble Music Box, as an example of how computational thinking is employed to solve complex design problems.
Students watched the video and discussed where they saw loops, variables, patterns, and so on in the performance and the machine. They discussed how the designer might have used concepts like decomposition to create the machine.
Key to helping us understand and engage with computation thinking concepts were resources from Google and the BBC.
BBC's Bite Size site has a really engaging introductions to coding and computer science. We used this site to explore the concepts.
Google's Exploring Computational Thinking for educators does a great job of showing how CT can be applied to other areas of inquiry, and how features some great examples of lessons that apply CT to different contexts such as history, science, and geography--great examples of interdisciplinary learning.