“This week’s class topic is ‘Innovation in Education’. Describe the SD#5 Design Lab. How does it fit in with ‘Innovation in Education’? What stood out to you? Which activities did you choose to do? How do you envision using this space with a class? What sort of project would you choose to do?”
In the Design lab we got to see plenty of things that I was unaware that the district had invested in or things I did not even know were available to classes. I find it interesting that there are staff like Ryan McKenzie who has a whole job working with classes with innovative technologies and with things that students do not really have access to within the classroom or outside of school usually. Having gotten to work with Ryan McKenzie again was great seeing how he is still teaching even if in a different way than when I had him as a teacher. Seeing how much enjoyment he has in all of these different technologies is amazing.
The design lab fits in with Innovation in education through giving students access to tools that are becoming bigger parts of our evolving world like 3D printing or robots and programing, things that are changing how our world work and changing what their future jobs will most likely involve from this point forward. The design lab also fits into innovation since it gives students chances to explore creativity with different forms of technologies which can push students to find ways to adapt things which either already exist or adapt their ideas and change things when it does not pan out how they are wanting it to.
Within the design lab I had tried out the Virtual reality (VR) game “keep talking and no body explodes” with a few different classmates. We took turns trying the different roles of being the person in the VR and being the person on the outside with the manual. After the time I spent with the VR I went and tried out the 3D doodle pens which I created a flower and a small and very messy little heart.
What stood out to me in the design lab was how clean and organized it was, it may come from me being used to spaces where so many people are using the space constantly instead of just one person but even with Ryan saying it was not super organized, I think it is insanely clean for a space which focuses so much on creation. It also stood out to me how much things are changing so fast like how Ryan said they were getting rid of the monitor screens to replace them with laptops, things in the design lab seem to be constantly changing far faster than I previously thought.
I envision using the design lab with a class as a way to explore the concept of revision. Have the students come up with ideas for what they are building and then have them test it out and change things that are not working as intended or are not working at all. Even having the students fully change what they are building entirely if their idea is not working.
The projects I would do with a class are possibly the battle bots which Ryan had showed videos of or even working on having them build as a class a Rube Goldberg machine as a class and having them test it out and revise what is not working or change what is working to something that works differently.
A major draw back I see with the design lab is definitely that there is only one Ryan McKenzie and of course he only has so much time meaning for how many schools and classes he is working with means you only have so much time to work with him and there is the limitation of what if he is booked and you cannot get your class in to use the resources. Another major draw back is how fast things fall out of date and how often things get changed out meaning once as a teacher you finally start to understand something especially for people like me who may not be great with technology and then they will be back to not understanding what is being done.