Design-Thinking Approach

Bringing Maker Culture to D-PREP – Parent Play Hours Launched!

As a part of our 2020 initiative to invest in efforts to make our students ready for the future of work, we have launched play hours with parents!

These play hours are designed for parents to experience the joy of innovation, failing forward and the non-linear process of design thinking to better support their students’ transition from interacting with technology as passive consumers to digital creators. We hosted two

Grade 3 and 4 students working on the Lifecycle of Rocks, Design Thinking Approach
Grade 3 and 4 students working on the Lifecycle of Rocks, Design Thinking Approach

play hours where parents explored various emerging creative technologies including bots for creative coding, smart sensors to learn about the Internet of things and many more!

Parents were given design challenges, where they had to create products with the tools assigned to them.

The resulting innovations stand testament to the process of using technology as a tool of play.

Grade 3 and 4 students learning the Lifecycle of Rocks being taught by Miss Alexandra, Design Thinking Approach
Grade 3 and 4 students learning the Lifecycle of Rocks being taught by Miss Alexandra, Design Thinking Approach

Coding Interactive stories about the Lifecycle of Rocks!

Similar to computer programming, coding is the process of “designing and building an executable computer program to accomplish a specific computing result or to perform a specific task (“Computer Programming”, 2020).”

At D-PREP, we don’t believe in teaching coding in isolation, we believe in creating opportunities where students

experience how humans can use coding as a tool to create products of personal value or social good. We did just that in G3/4. Students explored and researched about the lifecycle of rocks.

How they come to be and how they are used to create various products of value. Students were then given the design challenge to use coding to change

the facts about a rocks life cycle to an interactive and engaging story.

Students collaborated in groups of 3, researched about rocks, created their own scripts on paper, and then using code created prototypes of interactive stories about rocks. We will be hosting a public screening of these stories soon!