Getting Students to a Question and Idea Through Design Thinking Presented by Amanda Alonzo The Nueva School

Objectives: 0 Identify key components of design thinking 0 Experience the power of design thinking 0 Analyze 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

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 notebook b) 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 needs b) Use design thinking to propose a project (technical design, experimental design, or social design) that the current 9 th 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…

NEEDPROPOSED 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)