Students as Designers Part 5

In order to affect more students (outside of my classroom). I serve as a dept. chair and it has been a great opportunity for me to affect other teachers in my department who will in turn - affect many more students. In our curriculum meeting the other day - I discussed some of the drop in evaluations that I had done within each of the Marketing classes. Some were teacher centered and some were student-centered. We had a remarkable discussion on the concept of design. I talked with them about taking themselves out of the role of "teacher" and becoming more of a "designer". I gave them ideas of ways to take certain units and designing a curriculum and method of delivery that would cause students to be more engaged. A challenge that I gave them for the 4th quarter was for them to design a lesson that would require their students to actually be designers as well. The end of the year is challenging because high school students are already on summer break! So mentally, we need to step it up and make the classroom even more engaging. We are going to do a share session at our next meeting to see what they have come up with.....lets see if an itser can pay it forward:)

Students as Designers Part 4

We are covering the SELLING unit in my Fashion 1 classes. I am having the students be a designer of their very own accessory. They have to develop a concept, draw it and make it come to life. Once their very own design is created, they have to "sell" it to the class by describing the features and benefits. In years past, I have had students take a product out of their book bag to sell it, but I thought by having them serve as "designer" there would be a better understanding of the concept and they would take ownership throughout this activity. Hope it goes well:)

Students as Designers Part 3

We are continuing with our Project Runway - industry behind the runway project series. Due to the first round of presentations that were "death by powerpoint"...I tried to do a better job of modelling what could make them more creative at their attempt to be designers. This time, during this challenge, they needed to create a flyer. I created a template for them to fill in with prompt questions. I showed them how picture says a 1000 words. Therefore rather than giving "text book" defninitions - I wanted them to understand the concept well enough to answer the question and provide a "picture" that would answer the question. This allowed the students to "design" a flyer that would communicate valuable information by using visual language - a mixture of words and pictures. This approach was much more successful! Students were more "original" and "creative". They appeared to undersand the concepts much better than the previous unit. Less memorization and definitions and more interpretation and application. Getter better:)

Students as Designers Part 2

We had our 2nd day of presentations that the students were giving for their "training" plan. I was disappointed to see that most all the presentations so far were ALL POWERPOINT presentations. They did not use any creativity in training methods. ALthough they did take on the role as a designer and created a training plan - they did not use any activities or creative ways for the other students to learn the information. I did learn something through this process....my students are modeling what they see through everyone who is training them. The see powerpoint so much that they automatically are going to that method in order to deliver information. I did use this opportunity to have a great discussion with the class. We sat in a circle and discussed how much they truly learned from the various presentations. The students feel that they learned it more because of the repeition of having to discover the information, then present it themselves and then listen to each other presentations over and over. We also discussed how each presentation was conducted nearly the same. We then proceeded to critique the presentations to see how they each could be done differently with various forms of different tools and activities make a more engagine atmosphere and cause the "training" session to be more effective. I will also in my next 2 classes do more "modeling" so that I can coach them through the next project runway episode's challenge. On a positive note, the kids are still excited about this being an authentic activity. to be continued.....

Students as Designers Part 1

I designed a lesson that allowed my students to be designers. The unit covers design to production and distribution channel / process of stock handling / inventory. My students are doing a project runway challenge and we are video taping this challenge (just like the real show). The students are taking on the role of a contestant. They are challenged with creating a training plan for employees that cover all of the competencies listed above. They are challenged to create a traning package and presentation that would be innovative, captivate the listeners and an effective process. I provided them with resources that are in a power-point, access to internet and other literature. They had to 1. discover the learning by researching the information and educate themselves first in order to then education the trainees. 2. Then they had to design a training plan. They could do this through whatever "tool" that afforded the learning that they wanted to provide. Some are creating their own powerpoint with "visual mapping" rather than a bunch of words. Some are creating a training manual through Word and assembling it into a binder. Some are creating live illustrations and examples through mini skits. This is exciting to see how they create and design their own method of "teaching competencies" by taking on the role of a trainer themselves.