The 'Lego' mentality ( Where you build a Lego kit following detailed instructions but never remake it into anything else) of many children where everything needs to be easy to do has led to the gradual reduction and rejection of real crafts and activities from their lives, and a greater learning curve for children and adults when they are asked to build something and perfect it. In fact many people are so concerned not to lose face by doing something that might not work, even though this is a valid stage to getting something to work, that they need a great deal of persuading and encouragement to keep them going and belittle their own efforts.
This has implications for designing activities for students and is a fine balance between making a 'press out kit', what I disparagingly call 'Crayola Craft' where nothing is left to chance and individuality and experimentation gets the boot early in product development, and supplying something which will work if you persist for long enough...
Which neatly bring me to this picture below.
This rather rough lash up is the proof of concept for a new KS3/4 electronics project where students assemble a kit then experiment to program it so when waved through the air, the LED lights blink rapidly in a programmed sequence and persistence of vision means you will see words written in the air. My client, and educational supplier, wants proof it will work before placing an order... so I have persisted for some 4 hours to build it and test it... Still not there yet, I need to change the LED's for much brighter ones as the image does not persist long enough to see it clearly, but many of today's children would just give up now, they tried, it didnt work as expected, and can I have my Crayola kit back please because I KNOW it will work first time and will not make me look bad in front of my friends....
