The Most Common Questions K12 Educators Have About Design — Maker Spaces and Design Thinking
In this second article in the Q&A series we’ll talk about how to integrate maker spaces and design thinking. Responses are from Sandee Bisson, Maker Educator at The Brandeis School of San Francisco and edited by the Stanford d.school. You can read more from Sandee on her Make Wonder blog.
Can you help me understand the intersection of making, maker spaces, and design thinking?
I think of design thinking as the engine that drives our K-8 maker education program. My classes talk about design thinking a lot, but we don’t go through the whole cycle for every project, there’s just not time. Within each step of design thinking there lives dozens of discrete skills that, when thoughtfully taught and practiced, help our students to become better problem finders, problem solvers, and global citizens. Empathy is a big one. Yet it is a hard concept for many adults, and, undoubtedly, for a six year old. We practice empathy in how we ask each other questions about our work, in how we listen to each other, and in how we interact with books that inspire our projects. We practice empathy by examining our own biases and by becoming more aware of how they affect our ability to truly be present for others. Practicing empathy with fictional characters, stuffed animals, or puppets makes the idea more accessible and tangible for younger students.
Making allows students to take their ideas and give them form and shape. Design thinking empowers them to make things that matter.
Generally, I try to pair one or more aspect of design thinking with each big maker project we undertake during the school year. Last spring, I offered an elective to design and build a model shipping container home community. We used our brainstorming skills repeatedly with this elective: first when we were thinking about the placement of container homes within the community, then when thinking of the utilities and amenities for the community, and again when designing the interiors of our individual homes. Prototyping and testing are constantly at play in our maker space. I have many students who are perfectionists, and through this process, learn that their creations are not expected to be perfect and complete the first time around. This is liberating for them and it frees them from being afraid to take risks they might not have otherwise attempted. I aim to do a more extensive designing thinking project, one that goes through the whole cycle and tackles an authentic problem, every other year or so.
I am not really sure how to separate design thinking and making. The two are so intertwined. Making allows students to take their ideas and give them form and shape. Design thinking empowers them to make things that matter. In our maker space, the marriage of the two has resulted in students who love to create and who see the challenges of our world as things they have the power to change.
Re-visit our first article of the Q&A series.
