Create, Innovate, and Imagine with Maryland Digital Learning Standard #4

By Kerri Lambert, Teacher Specialist, AACPS Office of Instructional Technology

This is the fourth article in a series of posts focused on the Maryland Digital Learning Stands for Students.

Innovative Designer. Those two words just scream creativity and imagination- and kids. After all, how often have you been greeted with “But why?” or “What if?” or my 6 year old's current favorite “Just imagine if??”

The fourth Maryland Digital Learning Standard looks to harness that imaginative quality of children and focus it to solve real world problems using the design process and technology. Here’s the exact wording:

 

4. Innovative Designer

Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful, or imaginative solutions. Students:

a) know and use a design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts or solving authentic problems;

b) select and use digital tools to plan and manage a design process that considers possible constraints and risks; and

c) develop, test, and refine prototypes (models) as part of a cyclical design process.

What I love about this standard is that it specifically calls out that the solutions to the problems can be imaginative. After all, if we are preparing students for a future that is unknown, who’s to say what is imaginative now, can’t be brought to life in the future? After all, DaVinci conjured up designs for helicopter flying machines, solar power, and an adding machine hundreds of years before the technology was in place to make them a reality.

So how can we incorporate this standard into our classroom practices and leverage technology in the process? I’m glad you asked.

The first thing teachers can do is to encourage a positive growth mindset. If students are uncomfortable or unwilling to express their thoughts and ideas or to take risks, they will struggle with the brainstorming sessions needed to generate ideas for creative solutions. Using all student response systems that allow for anonymous posting or sharing of ideas will encourage all students to share their ideas in a safe space. Nearpod's collaborate boards, Lumio's Shout it Out, and Brightspace discussion boards are all platforms that allow students to post anonymously, but still allow teachers to see who responded with what for accountability purposes.

It’s also critical to give students the opportunity to creatively explore possibilities using Makerspaces. By building with blocks, taking apart old gadgets and electronics, tinkering with coding, students learn how things work. They can take pictures of their creations, describe their processes and more with video and/or audio recorded in Wixie, WeVideo, Brightspace or even just with the built in Chromebook tools. Try incorporating this style of center into independent work time.

Using digital research tools such as online databases and Discovery Education, students can dig deeper into the problem and research possible solutions, consequences, materials, or anything else that will help with the preliminary steps in the design process. To go along with this, using tools such as spreadsheets, digital check-lists, or notebooks will give students the tools to manage the resources and plan next steps. Want to do concept mapping or flow maps to lay out the process or solutions? Applications such as Wixie, Google Drawings, or Adobe Express provide students with shapes and drawing tools to help visualize their process. In fact, they can share these digital documents with peers to receive critical feedback to help improve their solution. Giving students the opportunity to practice these skills during research projects or even just mapping out a story digitally, will give them more confidence when doing a larger design process project.

Finally, students can use digital tools such as Wixie, Google Sketch-up, or Minecraft Education to build models of their solutions. Students want a physical model? No problem. They can use video and audio tools such as WeVideo, Wixie, or Brightspace video notes to capture their prototype tests and/or reflect on their results. Want to take it one step further? Have students pitch their solutions to “investors” in a video!

We want our students to stretch their brains and think creatively to solve real world problems. Giving them the tools and freedom to do so in the classroom is critical to making sure we continue to innovate in this country. Who knows, maybe five or six hundred years, people will be analyzing our digital drawings and notebooks like we do with DaVinci’s!