Last weekend I had a wonderful opportunity to attend #DesignCamp-A local (Free!) professional development offering in San Diego, facilitated by some of the brightest and most innovative teachers-all having fun with Design Thinking. While I have read a bit about Design Thinking, talked to others about it, and observed it in action at VIDA , this was my first experience actually doing it.@GrantLichtman lead us through a Design Thinking challenge that left me with a few key connections and questions, one of which I will share…

Design Thinking IS Deeper Learning

While I have heard many great minds throw these two words in the same sentence and I always knew them to be related, before #DesignCamp I couldn’t articulate the exact connection and what it meant to me. What I see now is that…

Design Thinking IS Deeper Learning because it’s doing work that matters

Doing work that matters to…

  • The students
  • The immediate and global community
  • The content area, The field
  • Life beyond school (college and career)

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Regardless of the model of Design Thinking you may follow, if you are leading students with fidelity through experiences where they are looking at real problems in the world, working to understand a specific need, innovating with new ideas and creating and testing solutions- learning deeply is bound to happen!

Here is a way to look at how nicely the two concepts of Design Thinking and Deeper Learning play together:

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So next time you hear these two phrases thrown together in a sentence you can move beyond the obvious connections and make your own!

 

*The first image of the Design Thinking Process above is from this awesome resource for teachers! The second is from yours truly.