Simone ICT: Entry 3 - Design Briefs and Online Games

Design Briefs

Using Design Briefs encourages children to think in different ways and builds higher order thinking.
Design Briefs get children to Investigate/Design, Produce and Analyse/Evaluate. See the Design Brief template below that children can use to record their discussions/thoughts about the design process.

Children are initially presented with a problem and need to come up with a solution. This can be done in groups. Examples include:

Who can make the tallest tower that can bear a certain load?
You and your family are stranded in the desert for a week, how will you survive?
Your class goes on a camping trip and the teacher forgets to bring the tents. What do you do?
For more ideas for problems that children can create design briefs for, visit the following website: http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/kirkwood/resources/construct.htm

In the above template, it can be seen that the Problem is located in the middle. This is because the design process is cyclical, with the problem at the centre.
An example of using a Design Brief will now be discussed.

Jump Frog Jump

Your team has been given the following materials: picture of a frog, elastic band, piece of cardboard, sticky tape, blank Design Brief. Your goal is to make the frog jump using all of the materials provided.

In the middle of the Design Brief the 'Problem to be solved' would be written. In the resources box, students would write all of the materials discussed above as well as their names. They then write dot points in the Investigate/Design, Produce and Analyse/Evaluate boxes as they attempt to solve the problem.
Before handing out materials, it is important to discuss the students' responsibilities to ensure a safe classroom (eg carrying scissors safely etc).
This activity focuses on hand-eye coordination, collaboration and cooperation and has an element of competition.
Design Briefs encourage creativity as there are many different solutions.
The task can be followed up with children writing a procedural text explaining how they attempted to solve the problem and the outcome.
The more Design Briefs that children complete, the more creative they are likely to become and they are also able to fill the briefs in more quickly and with more detail.

Online Games

A number of programs are available that allow you to create your own online games for your students. "Quia" is one such program. It costs $49US to subscribe to Quia for a year; however it is also possible to have a 30 day free trial (http://www.quia.com/).
Quia allows you to create your own educational games, quizzes, class Web pages and surveys. As well as creating your own, you can also explore millions of activities and quizzes created by educators from around the world.
Students can also create their own puzzles and get their classmates to complete them.
There are many options including true/false and multiple choice questions. Samples of games include: battleship, hangman, challenge board, columns, cloze activities, jumbled words, patterns, picture perfect (reveal the hidden picture under the squares), pop-ups, rags and riches and surveys. These could also be used on an interactive whiteboard if one is available.
Surveys could also be used to get children to evaluate your teaching.
Examples of quizzes created in QUIA: (multiple choice quiz on converting metric units) and http://www.quia.com/quiz/2514022.html http://www.quia.com/hm/668222.html (Hangman/Teddy bear version. Theme: animals).
This is an extremely useful website and is well worth the money for children to be able to access.

Simone ICT