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Real-Life Examples of Design Thinking in The Classroom

The document discusses the integration of Design Thinking in K-12 classrooms as a response to evolving educational needs and cultural shifts. It highlights real-life examples from New Tech High School and Notre Dame High School, showcasing how students engage in collaborative problem-solving projects across various disciplines. The emphasis is on fostering empathy, creativity, and innovation through structured challenges and projects, ultimately enhancing student engagement and ownership of learning.

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jiahenglee1997
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23 views4 pages

Real-Life Examples of Design Thinking in The Classroom

The document discusses the integration of Design Thinking in K-12 classrooms as a response to evolving educational needs and cultural shifts. It highlights real-life examples from New Tech High School and Notre Dame High School, showcasing how students engage in collaborative problem-solving projects across various disciplines. The emphasis is on fostering empathy, creativity, and innovation through structured challenges and projects, ultimately enhancing student engagement and ownership of learning.

Uploaded by

jiahenglee1997
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Real-Life Examples of Design Thinking in the Classroom

We are all continually trying to respond to a rapidly evolving global economy


and the many dynamic cultural shifts therein. This response includes new
pedagogies that are evidenced by new standards, assessments, tools and
learning environments.

One such attempt to connect how the real world is problem-solving and what
one can do in classroom environments is through Design Thinking. Early
design thinking appeared in the late 60’s and early 70’s and has recently
started to influence and infiltrate business and K-12 environments.

Much of the influence is coming from folks at IDEO, the industry leader, and
the d. School at Stanford University, the higher education torchbearer. The
rationale behind design thinking centers on a pedagogy aimed at creating
and facilitating future innovators and breakthrough thinkers. It is about
creating creative and collaborative workflows engineered to tackle big
projects and prototyping to discover new solutions.

And although we have K-12 schools incorporating design thinking into their
curriculum and instruction, as well as educators attending design thinking
workshops at places like the d. School at Stanford, what does design thinking
really look like in K-12 classrooms and schools?

Kicking Off The School Year

New Tech High School Napa Principal Riley Johnson began this school year
with a three-day school-wide design thinking challenge for his staff and
students.

According to Johnson, it was important that both students and teachers were
immediately immersed into a three-day design thinking environment that
would set the tone, culture and their mindsets for the upcoming school year.

Johnson said 415 students participated in a cross-curricular, cross-grade


challenge that examined the question: “How might we tackle a problem that
our community (global, national or local) faces?”

Teachers guided the students through specific themes and students selected
a theme that interested them most before getting in mixed grade groups.
The themes were: teens, human rights, water, privacy, violence, equity,
immigration, change as growth, food waste and robotics. Students, in their
theme groups, had to go through a process of building empathy in potential
users, creating a needs statement, brainstorming and ideation, generating
prototypes and testing their ideas. Everyone presented and there were prizes
awarded.

New Tech High Napa teacher Angelene Warnock said they were hoping to
build a sense of shared empathy by taking all 415 students through the
process together. “We hope to use design thinking as a stepping stone to
deepening the already strong student culture we have,” said Warnock.

Even the New Tech High Napa students appreciated the school-wide intro to
design thinking. “As a student, it was exciting to be able to start the year
different from all other schools,” said senior Ami Ambu. “New Tech High has
always stood out and gone down their own path and this challenge will help
us continue to do that into the future.”

The High School Classroom

Veteran science teacher Rebecca Girard, of Notre Dame High School in


Belmont, CA, has been using design thinking as the foundational approach
for her students to solve real-world problems.

Her students develop their own driving questions to investigate ways to


share their learning. The scientific method and design thinking have many
similarities according to Girard. “Over the past couple of years, I have been
more clear about using the design thinking model in my science classes. I
have especially focused on developing empathy and creating projects to
share with others for feedback and reflection,” said Girard.

Sample design thinking projects have included: students designing their own
labs experiments to discover and understand content, designing a solution to
“why doesn’t everyone compost”, and the IDEO Ebola Challenge. Girard’s
science students are also pursuing year-long design thinking projects that
become their digital portfolios.

Notre Dame History Teacher Gabor Molnar has demonstrated that design
thinking goes beyond the science and the scientific method and can be
applied to all disciplines such as social science. Students in Molnar’s classes
are studying the history of immigration in the U.S. but applying to the
political challenges and solutions of today. Students used a variety of
sources: blogs, news, political campaigns, music, song lyrics and more.

The Elementary Classroom


Design thinking challenges and projects are not limited to high school
environments. At Hall Middle School in Marin County, CA, Jennifer Fry’s fifth
graders were immersed into design thinking last year in her digital art class.

Fry used design thinking with her students when they constructed interactive
sculptures using a variety of media. Students worked in teams and were
given one constraint: design and execute their sculpture in one class period.
The idea was to model how engineers and architects, for example, view
constraints not as obstacles, but rather as gateways to deeper
resourcefulness and innovative thinking.

Her challenge looked like this:

Build a sculpture using the available materials with a moving and/or


interactive component by 9:30. Additional information:

 Your sculpture must have a MOVING and/or an INTERACTIVE element.

 Consider the VISUAL component of your sculpture. What will the


viewer SEE to draw them in?

 You DO NOT have to use every Little Bit in your kit. Use only the ones
you need.

 You may borrow bits from another group with their approval ONLY.

 You may check out a SPECIAL Little Bit from Ms. Fry. The list is on the
board.

 Use the materials on the back table and on the supply shelves to
construct your sculpture.

 If you need something you don’t see, ask Ms. Fry.

 Take CARE of the Little Bits!

Fry’s hope was to have the students look at and interact with other’s work,
provide feedback and debrief the experience. She admits that although this
project was an experiment and she didn’t know what to expect, it was a
fantastic learning experience for herself and the students.

“In the ten years I’ve been teaching, I don’t remember ever seeing the level
of engagement and ownership of learning as I did with this project,” said Fry.
“Every student was able to achieve a level of success no matter his or her
skill level. They had to be creative, develop something that was personally
meaningful, worked within the constraints, and used technology that was
new and different.”

For those educators and systems trying to incorporate more project-based


approaches that emphasize problem-solving, relevance and collaboration,
design thinking curriculum will have a great deal to offer.

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