In Christian Long’s article, “Teach Your
Students to Fail Better with Design Thinking”, the concept of design thinking
is explored and brought to life. Design thinking was created to better educate
students in a way that would be helpful in the real world. Students need to
learn to take risks, be flexible, and sometimes fail in order to find solutions
to major problems. Long explains that design thinking is intended to keep the
center around the students in order to promote creative thinking and a positive
working environment. A design camp was made in which the students were the
center and the teachers were mentors, just watching over the students as they
worked together to find solutions to educational problems. Students wanted to
create a classroom that would be productive, but not just be about showing off
the technology that they used in their findings. After many days at the camp
they presented their solutions to a board of judges. As Long mentions, it wasn’t
about the solutions they came to, but how they came to them with the
collaboration of all.
I
definitely like this approach to learning. Many subjects that are taught in
schools do not relate very well to real world problems. Design thinking helps
to see the realities of issues and gets creative thinking going in all kinds of
directions. Students know they are in an environment where they can throw out
ideas without being judged, and they do not have to have the feeling of failure
lurking over their shoulders. I could have really benefited from something like
this. The pressure of always having to have the right answer made it so I didn’t
take risks in my work when it could have turned into something great. I also
think this is good because some of the biggest lessons learned are through
failures. This teaches students to think outside the box and not be afraid to work
for something and be creative while doing so.
This
issue ties into ISTE standard 1 of creative thinking and innovation. Students
are encouraged to think outside the box and not worry about the consequences
during the brainstorming period. It represents standard number 2 for students as
well, where students use digital media to collaborate and communicate with
others to learn. ISTE standards 3 and 4 are also used because students are
doing research on problems and finding solutions which means they have to think
critically and narrow their solutions down to a solution that will work over
time.
Long, C. (2012). Teach your students to
fail better with design thinking. Learning
& Leading with Technology, 39(5). 16-20.
Kendyl,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I was not aware of this method of "design thinking" and think it is a really great idea. I really liked the point you made that sometimes while learning new things we must fail at them in order to find the solution and really grasp the concept. I think this is an important thing to address because often failure can lead to giving up on a goal or dream. But if we take this approach and teach students that it is okay to fail, and that many people fail many times before achieving their goals, it will help them to think in this fashion and not give up. I also like how this design thinking method relates to real world issues more than tradition learning methods. We all know that it gets frustrating learning information that we will never use outside of the classroom! This is a great method of learning and helps children think critically while also thinking freely.