Real Product Design

Teaching product design is a pain if you want pupils to make something they can test working that isn't a bottle opener or a hanger... The film here shows a small radio typically bought for £1 in the UK used as the basis for a project.

Here is the link mentioned in the video

In later blogs I will be showing you files and ideas for turning this into a product design project for year 9 and 10 (Ages 13-15) and a few tips on construction.

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Teaching Mass and Inertia - with Skittles!

Needed a quick game to introduce concepts of design ideas, mass and inertia when visiting a primary school. Came up with this using a small bag of skittles sweets.

First I put a few skittles on each table and then asked people to stand by the table which had the most red, least yellow etc. Then explained that sometimes we came up with a design idea we were absolutely right was the best one. Then asked them to stand by the table with three sweets of the same colour. This time there was a couple of tables and used this to explain that sometimes there was more than one good idea and you had to choose the one you liked the best (flavour in this case!)

Then I put some masking tape a third of the way up the table and they played a game where they had to flick the sweets up the table into the green area beyond the tape. Any in that area got eaten by the 'flicker', all others including those which fall off the table are eaten by the opposing player. Used this to explain what mass was and how friction affected mechanisms. the rest of the afternoon we made clockwork mechanisms and referred back to the skittles experiment frequently.

Afterwards I thought, what a great idea! Took the idea to another school the next week and it bombed.... because no sweets were allowed to be given to kids and Kidney beans just don't work properly... If I was doing this with staff, I would use dark chocolate covered coffee beans and watch the opponents get more hyper as the caffeine kicked in!

New ways of learning

I ran a 3D graphics event in June for Gifted and Talented Children from across the Midlands. It was in how to use the free 3D program, Google Sketchup. It consists of about 14 units, each with sample files and an e-learning film showing how to use the particular skills taught in that unit.

I am in discussions to sell these films as a personal / group learning resource and they will soon be available to purchase online and download a set.

In the meantime, here's some screen dumps of the power point presentation and various models used in the films.