Make Your School a Better Place: Creating Solutions to Problems Using What's At Hand

thingiverse

A project / lesson plan which allows students to work together to solve problems in and around their school. Students are tasked with finding a problem around their school (in our case, Patrick Henry Community College). They will can then, while working through the design thinking process, brainstorm, design, and create a solution using the materials, and tools, and equipment at hand. This was lesson / project was first implemented as a brainstorm / design challenge for our school's Maker Club, and has most definitely had a positive impact on the students and the school as a whole. As students work together on a project of this nature you can see them establishing better communication skills, and of course knowledge of the Design Thinking process, while actually creating solutions to problems. For an example, you can see a guitar pick a group of students designed for a gentleman who suffers from carpal tunnel syndrome.