Mama, Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Designers

(cross-posted at TechLearning.com)

I’ve talked here and in my entries at the TechLearning blog a bunch about Daniel Pink and his book A Whole New Mind. It’s a stellar book and Pink’s argument that we need to encourage 6 senses (Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning) to help prepare people (students) for this coming “Conceptual Age”, has certainly influenced much of what I’ve been doing in the computer lab this year. I thought I’d take this week’s blog entry to describe one journey that I’ve been taking with 3rd graders in what I see as the most important of the senses: Design.

MEET MR. PINK
I started the unit with a brief introduction to Pink’s premise, that the world is changing due to the “3 A’s” (Asia, Automation, and Abundance), augmented with this quote from an interview with him:

“The economy that’s emerging today confers the greatest rewards on a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. It rewards not “left-brain” knowledge workers, but “right-brain” creators and empathizers. The future belongs to those kinds of folks —artists, inventors, caregivers and, yes, designers.”

I shared the quote with students to continue the examination of what skills might be needed for their future, but I know that these words at best were probably heard only in the abstract. Mostly, I included this quote for the benefit of the teachers (who accompany their classes when they come to the lab) in order to not only recommend Pink’s book, but also —to be honest— to convince any skeptics of the value of the lesson. In this day and age where test scores dominate, we need all the help we can get to maintain a balance between the ever increasing “standards based” demands and that of creative well-being.

TIME TO EVALUATE
We spent time on a few professional designers’ sites to look at Logos that they designed. Students initially needed clarification as to what a logo is, but once we pointed out the many logos we collectively brought into the room just on our clothing alone, they got it. Looking at the professional logos, I started asking students if they liked any of them, and if so, why? At this point in the lesson, there were no responses.

Next, we matched our wits against a professional designer who had posted on his blog “The Best and Worst Logo Remakes of the Century”. I “culled” his opinions and put them into more kid-friendly language (his site isn’t entirely appropriate for elementary school students), asking students to look at the “before and after” of the designs and decide what they liked or didn’t like. Initially, students had little to say, but the more we kept doing it, the more specific they became in their likes/dislikes. This was an exciting part of the lesson, watching them gain confidence in not only disagreeing with each other, but also with the professional designer. They moved out of simply saying “it’s good” or “it’s bad” and presented evidence for their opinions. I was worried about possible hurt feelings over disagreements but there was none of this. They were very professional.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD LOGO?
Now that students were comfortable in evaluating the logos, we moved onto creating a list of “Criteria to Consider” when designing a logo. It echoed the specifics of what they liked/disliked about the designs they assessed and clearly demonstrated that they were thinking and —more importantly— looking in new ways than they were at the beginning of the lesson. The items on the lists often contradicted other items on the list (such as: “use a light background” and “use a dark background”) which the students were comfortable with. They got it: these were considerations, not necessarily hard, fast rules. These were things to think about when accessing one’s own logo: “Does this work? Should I do this instead? Why does it work? Why doesn‘t it work?”

AUTHENTIC PURPOSE
At this point in the lesson, the students were ready for an authentic job: to design a logo for our School. As I wrote in a previous post, kids want real jobs that will help make the school a better place. Asking them to create a logo for the school is not only asking them to fill a real need, but also giving them an opportunity to help define their own learning environment. We started by generating a list of words that represented the school. Students realized that the words didn’t necessarily need to be used in the design, but instead focused on how they would make designs that would communicate these ideas. I talked about how this is what would happen in a “real” design meeting (people brainstorming words) and shared the experience that my wife just had with a web-designer for the creation of a website for her family business. The first step was “sitting around” and coming up with words that express the core values of the business.

SKETCH TIME
It was now time for students to start “scratching out” their ideas on paper. I encouraged them to make as many sketches as they wanted, to play around, try things out. Next time I do the unit, I think that I will actually pass out napkins or envelopes because this is where many good ideas actually start in the real world: on the back of napkins and envelopes. The main goal at this stage was to have students play with ideas and in giving them a blank piece of paper, I found that many wanted to produce their final ideas right away, rather than taking time to explore. A blank paper perhaps begs for completion, where the back of a napkin may encourage more “doodling”.

Once students had found something they liked, they were invited to fire up our graphics program, KidPix, and get their ideas into digital form. I encouraged students to let go of their pencil sketch ideas if they wanted to. After all, KidPix offers different tools than a pencil does and the new tools may inspire new approaches to the problem.

At this point in the lesson, the lab was entirely silent. Students took the task very seriously and spent much time revising their work. I doubt this would have happened without the “set-up” training of examining other logos and defining criteria. Students worked hard at bringing their designs to their highest level.

THE GREAT EQUALIZER
Using a digital art program makes sense in this digital age; drawing with a mouse will never make sense. I have a dream of writing a future grant where I can purchase enough Wacom tablets for students in the lab, but at present, we are stuck with the mice. I am constantly amazed at the incredible art that students do in fact create with a mouse (much better than I could ever do!) and their patience with its limitations.

In examining Design, I wanted to introduce students to a free tool online called VectorMagic, which will auto-trace “bitmap images” and turn them into “vector images”. I explained the difference between bitmap and vector images, which is visually demonstrated very well at the VectorMagic site. One purpose in bringing this tool into the lesson was to provide experience with an online tool as well as practice uploading and downloading files on a website. In turning the bitmap images into vector images, I knew they would change dramatically: become more “polished” with smother and crisper lines. I told the students that if they didn’t like the new changes after using the tool, they could always go back and submit the bitmap they created in KidPix. It was so interesting to watch every student not only choose the vector image, but to witness the excitement they displayed when they saw the finished output. It was as if “magic” had been performed on their work, making it more professional. In talking with Cheryl Oakes about this, she nailed it when she called this tool “The Great Equalizer”, meaning that this tool allowed students a “level playing field” where many of the flaws introduced by the constraints of using a mouse to draw were erased.

NOW WHAT?
The students are very happy with their amazing designs and are hopefully now viewing themselves as “designers”. The designs will soon be presented in rotation on the front page of our school’s website. This lesson will be the “starting point” for when these students design programs using the software Scratch next year as 4th graders. Students will recognize one of Pink’s identified forces in this coming Conceptual Age —Automation— when we discuss how we had the VectorMagic website finish the final product of the design. In a sense, we “outsourced it” to software that could do it better than the tools we had (clunky mice).

But why teach Design at all?

I believe it helps strengthen the important skill of reflecting on work and defining what makes quality work as well as provide an opportunity for students to experiment and learn from mistakes (in an earlier post, I mentioned an article called “Art for Our Sake” that examines this idea in detail). Pink’s argument for encouraging the sense of Design is that it is a “high-concept aptitude” that will be difficult to outsource or automate and will give our students a competitive edge in future employment. But more importantly, as Barbara Chandler Allen says in Pink’s book, “To be a designer is to be an agent of change.” We need designers to invent new ways of looking at old problems, to help make the world a better place.

Please share stories and links of how Design is being taught in your schools in the comments below!