KinderSTEAM with Brown Engineering

March 30, 2017March 29, 2017 by Naomi Stein

Who We Are

Sara and I are both seniors studying mechanical engineering at Brown University, and we are interested in classroom design and placemaking as it relates to social and emotional learning. I worked as an assistant teacher in a preschool for several years in my hometown of Middletown, NJ. While at school, I’ve taught a theater class for 4th and 5th graders through the Brown After-school Elementary Mentoring (BEAM) program and co-lead a Design for America team investigating design thinking education in schools. Sara previously completed a project where she and her classmates custom built furniture for a 2nd grade classroom.

Project Overview

Our project is part of our capstone design course at Brown. We originally started as a part of a larger group, the purpose of which was to develop a line of children’s furniture to encourage imaginative play. Throughout our research and ideation process, Sara and I became more interested in social and emotional learning and mindfulness in classroom spaces. We eventually formed our own subgroup to explore those ideas, while the rest of the group has continued to develop their play furniture idea.

The two directions we are most interested in pursuing are designing spaces for mindfulness/reflection and exploring ways to promote feelings-sharing and healthy communication through physical objects and furniture. We have been exploring the former with the help of the JCDS Pre-K class, who have shared insights on their own classroom Quiet House with us and helped us develop our frame prototypes.

Workshop with Pre-K

We have had a great time developing our Quiet House ideas with Laurie’s Pre-K class! During circle time, we asked the students to tell us about their own Quiet House, which former students helped Peter build and decorate. The students explained to us that the Quiet House was a place they went when they wanted to calm down and especially enjoyed the stuffed animal snake, books, and decorative lights. We showed the students four different prototypes we designed and built out of cardboard using our laser cutter at the Brown Design Workshop. Then, each student decorated one of the prototypes using pipe cleaners, glitter, fabric, markers, ribbon, and other materials. We were really impressed with their creativity and ideas for the spaces. They had some great suggestions for ways to make the houses feel cozier, like by adding fabric to the outside or pillows and rugs on the inside. They also used stickers to show us where they thought that lights, windows, and doors should be. One student used popsicle sticks to model a front gate that would only allow him to enter his Quiet House, stressing the importance of privacy. We really appreciated the variety of creative ideas the class had, and we had so much fun helping them build. It was also really useful for us to get a clearer idea of the students’ relationship to their own Quiet House.

Design Lab with 3rd Grade

We look forward to collaborating with the 3rd Grade class in Design Lab to prototype a classroom Recharging Station. We visited Design Lab where the students were sharing the data they collected from interviewing other students. Questions the 3rd graders asked included “Should we have a recharging station in Design Lab?” and “How does the recharging station help?” For one question, 27 students said “Yes” and 25 said “No.” Rotem had students create two block towers–one with 27 blocks and one with 25 blocks. When the two towers were held up next to each other, we could see that this wasn’t a very big difference. The students are continuing their design process over the next few weeks. We can’t wait to see what they come up with!

Thirdgradia Design with Brown Engineering Students

December 22, 2016 by Naomi Stein

This year, the Design Lab has a small corner carved out with bean bags and pillows. It has become affectionately know as the “Recharging Station” and is meant to be used for students to relax for a few short minutes during their busy days to unwind and recharge.

The citizens of Thirdgradia noticed that the Recharging Station was being used during class in a distracting and unhelpful way. Students were getting too comfortable and spending too long there. The third grade class decided to focus on this ‘problem’ and to find a solution for it through the design thinking process. Luckily, two Brown Engineering students, Katie and Sara, were also working on a similar design problem. They were looking to create furniture for children that was designed with children’s input. We invited them to the third grade Design Lab class every Friday to be a part of this process.

The first step the third graders took was to be empathetic in order to understand the users (tired students). They compiled a list of questions and interviewed students from all grades during their recess and free time for two weeks.

The second step of Design Thinking required that third graders study and understand the data and information they collected and then defined their problem in a ‘How might we…’ statement.

Here is their statement: How might Thirdgradia fix/ change/ redesign the Recharging Station so it will be a small, private, less comfortable, calming and less attractive spot?

The third step of their Design Thinking process was to brainstorm and think of as many wild solutions as they possibly could. This process was facilitated by our friends Sara and Katie, from Brown. Students noticed that the Recharging Station was too open and its boundaries undefined. Students’ ideas included adding a privacy screen, developing a system that shows who is in the station, adding windows, and adding an escape route in the event of a fire. Students also wanted to reduce comfort (remember, one of their problems was that kids were spending too much time in the station!) by rearranging the pillows, building a plain cardboard structure, using a plain color and reminding users about appropriate use of the station.

The fourth step in the process was prototyping, at which time students were able to create and build. They worked with the Brown students to build small models of what they hoped to create. The students had a short initial prototyping experience, where the groups of students were asked to draw or build some aspect of the ideas generated earlier.

This prototype represents a new way to arrange the cushions in the station

This prototype is part of a ticket system

a special phone system that teachers can use to communicate with students in the station

Last week, Sara and Katie brought to class their final prototype that incorporated many of the students’ solutions and perspectives. They call it the Quiet Pod. The class put the pieces together to create the final product in half an hour. The students had lots of fun, and were given ample opportunities for collaborative work and cooperative learning. They also gave the designers thoughtful and useful critique.

We are grateful for our school’s partnership with these talented students and the engineering department at Brown.

Our work is not done yet, but it is incredibly exciting to see our design process coming to life!

To be continued…

Rotem

Design Vs. Engineering in Schools

June 21, 2018December 8, 2016 by Naomi Stein

Design has become a very popular term in education these days. It seems the term is used in a million ways, just to spice things up. For example, I was recently at a local private school and I noticed a prominent display that said “Design Challenge: Create a catapult that can launch a golf ball at least 5 feet.” Now, this, to me at least, is not a design challenge, but rather an engineering or a physics challenge. Despite the fact that students are asked to design an object, children are not asked to identify real life problems, observe human behavior, or empathize with the user- all the core values of Design Thinking.

In the JCDSRI design lab, we have been working hard to teaching the invaluable design thinking process BEFORE attempting to build a machine. Let me give you some examples: In first grade, they noticed that one student frequently forget his diabetes bag whenever changes his class, so they are working on creating systems to help him remember. In fifth grade, students noticed that we create a tremendous amount of waste during lunch and so they will be trying to devise ways to get families to use less disposable material and use more glass, metal, or reusable plastic packaging.

Design thinking, often referred to as “user centered design” or “human centered design” starts with looking for problems in the world, and moves on to interviewing and observing how people act, so that we understand people’s values. Many of our design lab classes are actually about how to ask questions, observe and gather data- and not at all about building or engineering!

This is time well spent. One thing that is exceeding difficult for children (and perhaps all people) is to NOT come up with solutions right away. One of the design thinking mantras is “You’ve got to move slow to move fast!” In other words- it is critical to really observe, empathize, and define a problem before thinking of an answer. Sometimes this process feels frustratingly slow (especially for children), it is better than designing a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

Our fifth graders are eager to ‘invent’ products and systems to help families create less waste. As Design Lab teachers, our job is to slow them down and get them to observe and empathize before they invent. The fifth grade is now sitting dispersed throughout the lunch room, observing and taking note of what kids bring to school in their lunch bags, what gets eaten, and what gets thrown away. Their next step will be to interview parents about the process of making lunch, and why buying prepackaged, disposable bags is so attractive. After they understand the practices, values, and marketplace around disposable materials, they will begin to design solutions to the problem.

The skills of engineering and design are complementary but very different. Where engineering is solving a pre-defined problem design is finding and understanding a problem. Both are important, but where as engineering is geared towards “making stuff,” design is geared towards making the world a better place for human beings.

Shoebox Required!

October 31, 2016October 27, 2016 by Sarah Shay-Davidson

The holiday of Sukkot commemorates the 40 years that the Israelites traveled through the desert after fleeing Egyptian slavery. A Sukkah is a temporary structure which must have three sides. The roof must be sparse enough to see three stars while sitting in the Sukkah. It is our custom to eat all of our meals in the Sukkah during the 7 day holiday. There are some families who even sleep in a Sukkah! Welcoming signs, tables, chairs and decorations are used to create a warm and celebratory atmosphere to dine in and enjoy the holiday of Sukkot.

First grade students transformed shoeboxes into incredible Sukkot (plural for a Sukkah) using sticks and leaves for schach (the roof of the Sukkah). We took advantage of the glorious Autumn weather to gather sticks and leaves from our playground. During Design Lab, with the help of Peter, students created these magical Sukkot.

Students took a “gallery walk” and spent time looking at their classmates’ work noticing interesting details. It was a special moment to listen to each student speak with genuine respect of each other’s work.

Chag Sameach (Happy Holidays) to all!

Welcome to Design Lab

September 29, 2016 by Naomi Stein

Shalom,

I am Rotem and I am so excited to teach Design Lab to JCDSRI students from PreK to 3rd grade (and learn with them!). We just ended our fourth week in Design Lab and I would like to share with you some highlights of our time together.

We began by asking: What do we do in Design Lab? How can we think like designers?

The students had great ideas: we build things, we create, we take something and make it into something different. Everyone loves to create and to explore the materials in the room, to build with Lego, K’nex, Lincoln logs, cardboard and more.

In Design Lab, we are learning about the process of Design Thinking. Design Thinking is used to solve problems and create change in our world. The first step in this process is to look for problems. While not an easy task, the students were still able to share some great problems they are interested in solving:

Keeping our hands to ourselves
How to keep our stuff inside our cubbies
Food spilling in lunch box / water leaking in backpack
During quiet time it is hard to stay quiet
Caring for the guinea pigs in 3rd grade
Losing things
The way people judge your work
Playing ‘Monkey at the Bat’ during recess
Being distracted while working in class

We also started practicing paying attention to details. In Hebrew the expression for being empathetic is Lasim Lev — “putting your heart,” meaning we make sure to look with our soul and not only with our eyes. We played different games in which the students had to pay close attention to small details.

For example, I asked students to change one thing (the way you hold your hands, tuck your shirt in, untie your shoelaces, etc.) and can your partner notice the change?

Another was a visual memory game – who is missing from the class? What color is their shirt?

A long journey is ahead of us and it will be an interesting one.

Lehitraot (see you again)

Rotem

Special Day

June 20, 2016 by jdavis

Judaism Meets Design Thinking Meets Science and Math on Special Visitors Day

The second graders and their special visitors had a wonderful time collaborating and working together.

How might we take this Jewish phrase and show it in a visual 3-dimensional form, so that we have a deeper understanding of the phrase?

Groups chose one of the following phrases and then began creating a 3-D form together:

“What is mine is yours and what is yours is yours.”

“You are smart, smart, smart, but you are not so smart.”

“There are three important things in life. The first is to be kind, the second is to be kind, the third is to be kind.”

Why We Need Design Lab

June 2, 2016 by Naomi Stein

Here’s a challenge for you: quickly sketch a scientist. Easy, right? You might be thinking lab coat, eyeglasses, crazy hair, test tubes everywhere, computers, and oh… male.

While I may be making an assumption here, research has proven that this is how many people envision scientists. Here is an article explaining these findings.

In design lab this week, students in preK, kindergarten and first grade were given the same challenge I gave to you: draw a scientist. Some drawings were consistent with what researchers have found.

Others were not so consistent.

The article above suggests that “students who visit real scientists or engage in hands-on inquiry activities tend to draw less stereotypical images of scientists.” This is why all schools need programs like our Design Lab and design thinking curriculum; so that we can change our stereotypes and create a brighter future. At each grade level, students are engaged in projects that involve hands-on inquiry inside and outside of Design Lab time. Students at JCDSRI aim to solve real world problems while learning that we can all make a difference in the world, whether you’re a girl, a boy, have crazy hair, wear a lab coat, or none of the above.

Boating in First Grade

May 26, 2016 by Naomi Stein

What makes a boat float? First graders learned that the amount of weight a boat can hold is dependent on the shape of its bottom. They created boats out of tin foil, cardboard, duct tape and some other interesting materials. They are really good at utilizing the materials in the design lab!

Many people created flat-bottom boats and some created V-bottom boats. For example, Gev created a flat-bottom boat out of a cylinder and lots of duct tape. The next step was to add some weight to the boat, so we added pennies! One by one, we counted each penny that was put into the boat together. Can you guess how much money Gev’s boat held?

It held $1.02!

Sink or Float

May 19, 2016 by Naomi Stein

As we get closer and closer to the end of the school year, we can’t help but be excited about warm weather activities. One of our favorites is swimming! It got us thinking about pool and water safety. In PreK, kindergarten and first grade, we learned that designers often create prototypes in the name of safety. “I learned to swim with floaties,” mentioned Asher in PreK.

First, we looked at some action figures in the water and realized that they probably don’t know how to swim, because they sank to the bottom of the “pool.” To help them, we created prototypes of life vests for them. The goal of the design challenge was to keep the action figure’s head above water, because we don’t breathe through our toes, we breathe through our noses.

Second Grade Toy Store

May 19, 2016 by Naomi Stein

Congratulations to the children and families of our second graders. They’ve been hired! They received this notification from the Design Lab today:

Congratulations! You have been hired to design and build a new toy! Your product will be marketed and sold across the nation (after many ITERATIONS, of course).

Step 1: Frame the problem

“How might we design a game, toy, or activity so that children will enjoy it, learn from it, and learn how to cooperate with others?”

Step 2: Empathize/Immerse

We learn about the user of the toy we are designing and conduct focus group interviews.

Step 3: Ideate & Prototype!

Build it!

Step 4: Test

Try to sell your product. You will need an advertisement! Think about commercials, magazine & newspaper ads….