A Little Bit of Progress at a Time
We hit a bit of a wall on Friday when our team met with more JMU professors from the Education Department particularly for Elementary. The critique of, “How is 3D printing more helpful than a 2D image?” was brought to our attention. This is challenging our team’s design process, as we want to make tools that will be most helpful for students of all ages. This set back is something we will have to factor into our decision-making and design process from here on out.We understand that it’s difficult for others to figure out how printing a 3D model could be useful instead of just ordering kits/models.
In addition, we were tasked by JMU professor, Dr.Bodle, with creating a physical representation of a child development concept. Known as the….concept, is one that his graduate and undergraduate students struggle to grasp. He there the following details out about what he thought would be interesting (we just have to figure out an actually model if we go through with any of his ideas.):
- Social Studies/ Sciences
- A theoretical Concept (historical thinking)
- Expanding Environmental Framework
- Puzzle Model
- SOL:
- Place Value
- Time
- Grammar (Adjective/Adverbs)
- Relationships between Fractions and decimals
- Phases of the Moon (1st-5th grade)
To our knowledge there is not currently a model of this concept available. As we begin tinkering with the idea our main focus is how to make this model dynamic.
This past weekend, we had a meeting with two instructors. Our hope in going into the meeting was that they already had a few ideas for us and that after we pitched our purpose for the project, that they could specifically weigh pros and cons, generate concepts, or tell us yes/no. Friday afternoon, we ventured out for a meeting with the Elementary Department of Education. We ended up pitching our idea and Dr. Bodle was on board about the project. He was interested in the idea to do something along the lines of “Conceptual Theories.” His specific idea was designing and creating a model that will help elementary students grasp the concept of eras in social sciences/ social studies that can be memorized. The idea was a good one, because I know in school trying to remember all the eras/periods throughout history were difficult. So we understood where he was coming from; however, we couldn’t figure out how to experiment the idea… He also thought it would be a great idea to try design an puzzle model that dealt with expanding environmental framework. We are only having trouble trying to configure a model that will actually be able to help his students…
We have been trouble figuring out a concrete idea for our design. For class, we end up looking unprepared when in reality we’ve been put our heads together to think about different designs, but thinking of designs NOT already tinkered or made. Our group communicates outside of class if not every day, every other day. We’re in constantly trying to create some sort of design for Dr. Bodle, but we just haven’t been having any luck.
But also, we do have a small survey for the Instructors student teachers to take that will help provide our group information on their ideas for this project.. However it is just a waiting game.
Image from: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/18/11255942/morning-people-evening-chronotypes-sleeping
