Design Thinking in the Classroom: From Ideas to Practices.

This blog post is about changing units of instruction to make them more engaging to students. These interactive and collaborative units are called “Design Thinking”. “Design thinking is used to solve design challenges, or units of study structured around real world problems linked with interdisciplinary academic studies”(2014). The units are broken into five parts that include Gather, Glean, Generate, Gauge and Go.  The blog describes each of these stages. Students collaborate all the way through the project and end up with a product that has real world applications.

While this blog post is geared toward classroom teachers, teacher librarians would find the information useful. These units would benefit from the collaboration with a teacher librarian. Students need a place to gather to brainstorm their assignment and the physical learning commons would be the perfect place. A virtual learning commons would allow them to gather their information in one place, for all to share.

Ott, L. & White, E. Design thinking in the classroom: From ideas to practice. Part I. P21Blogazine. Partnership for 21st Century Skills, April 24, 2014. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/news-events/p21blog/1403-design-thinking-in-the-classroom-from-ideas-to-practice-part-i