Starting the design project for the school library

Motivate to read

The project is designed for a 6.th grade, and the aim is to create a more inspiring PLC (School library), and therethrough to motivate kids from 1st. to 5th. grade to read more.

The design project (and design brief):

Goals and outcome:

The goal for the students is to learn to “read” a room and it’s functions, and come up with alternative ideas. To help discover and define a problem, and through a scaffolded design process, to come up with their own version of an augmented solution.Frames: The team of 14 students from 6th. grade, have about three weeks of danish lessons (18x45min) to finish the project.The result should be one common project from the group.The project have to involve physical products created on vinylcutter and/or lasercutter. The product may also contain other technologies.Activities: The design brief - Class conversation. The students were told that they had to help solve a real problem. The national tests in reading, shows that our students doesn’t read as much as they should. We have also just worked with the UN’s 17 sustainable goals, so this would also be a way for them to contribute to the goal “Better education”. See other activities in field study, ideation and fabrication.

Field study:

The students were “forced” into the learning pit, to try to define the concept of reading. Through different activities they came up with the definition “understanding symbols and signs”. The time they spend in the learning pit, they talked about things like “reading a situation, reading body language, can you choose NOT to read?, can you read a symbol?, can you read a language you don’t understand?”. They also had to do an experiment about finding a book that they would like to read. It had to be a book that they didn’t knew exist. They had to look for things that helped them find the book and also come up with things that could have helped/inspired them if the library were different. See Google slides for activities and materials (slide 1-8):


https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ChdKjgamdERHTdp3K73eQt3J3oXCtBrbImV6oYLty38/edit?usp=sharing

Ideation: 

In the field study, it became clear to several of the students that they were missing some visual help. They also thought it was easier and faster to read symbols rather than words.Activity 1: To give their products some kind of content, that were linked to literature that they have read throughout their school time from 1st. to 6th. grade, we did a brainstorm. The idea was to give them content that they could put into a visual effect/product as a part of the solution. A common data bank where everyone could pick ideas from.Activity 2: Pick either a book , an author or a character from our data bank, and draw something that could be a visual inspiration. You can think in book covers, silhouettes, quotes or something complete different. Share your drawing in a group and give each other feedback. In the feedback focus on:Is the choice (book, genre, character etc.) suitable for the age group 1st. -6th. graders?Is it clear what book it’s from? Does the idea/drawing inspire you to read the book?


Choose the best idea in the group and present it for the class in a short pitch.In class - we choose the one idea we would like to go with - it can be a combination of several ideas.We will do ideation on the idea till we come up with a clear idea of a product.