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

A Student-Designed School Library

Chambers, Julia

Hohenadel, Kristin. (2014, Feb. 26). Eighth-graders design and build a school library for the 21st century. Slate [Weblog]. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/02/26/eighth_graders_at_realm_charter_school_in_berkeley_design_and_build_their.html

This is the first example I've seen of a school library that was entirely designed (and built!) by the eight-grade students who use it. Students were given a space for a "library" and they came up with a space that greatly resembles the Learning Commons models we've been studying. Students were given free-reign as to what might go in this space, and the students chose openness, comfort, and hang-out space over stacks of books. They designed bookshelves using a "X"-shaped module theme (X as a functional shape, but also as metaphor for the algebraic unknown.)  The Berkeley charter school has run out of funding, but has plans to fundraise to realize the vision. (Watch the Kickstarter video.)

Evaluation: I love the student-driven nature of this project and am intrigued by how closely the ideas resemble what we've been talking about as a Learning Commons space. What is absent in this picture is a librarian or information specialist. Imagine what this space could do with an innovative school librarian at the helm!