If I say "design" what do you see? An house project, an object, a chart, the desing of a chair?
You can design a product, but you can also design a service, an event, an interaction, a system, a collaboration, an exhibition, an educational experience.Design is therefore not just the design of a chair. Designers think in terms of projects. It is therefore necessary to stimulate the reflection of growing young people so that, through design, they can participate critically and actively in our present. In the contemporary world, an effective design education can support young people in developing critical thinking, introducing them to a transdisciplinary approach and stimulating their reflections so that they begin to think (including themselves) in a design key: an exploration of meanings useful to explain the complexity of our being-in-the-world. The Design Your School – Learn Design and having Fun project is developed to promote actions in schools aimed at strengthening design skills by guiding teachers and students, through the use of digital technology, in a process of solving a problem and/or analysing a need in stages.
«Design must become an innovative, highly creative interdisciplinary medium, capable of responding to real human needs»
«Every action is always a learning experience, also about ourselves, as well as about the community in which we act»
DYS has been developed as a web app useful to support teachers and students, step by step, in the construction of interdisciplinary learning paths that can be customised according to project phases (Exploration, Analysis, Research and Development of ideas and projects, Production, Sharing). A tool that will help to organise and archive the material produced during the design process, facilitating the link between activities and facilitating inclusion for children with specific learning needs.
The platform therefore aims to strengthen design competences by elaborating on what is indicated in the document published in 2019 by the European Union, Key Competences For Lifelong Learning, which recommends the dissemination of design-based educational approaches already from the early years of schooling, because they improve learning outcomes and are more engaging for learners. In addition to providing opportunities for innovative, collaborative and transdisciplinary educational experiences, they put learners at the centre and demand their active participation, improving the learning process and supporting the development of digital competences.
Alongside the actions directly related to the development of the digital platform, the collaboration with the University of Perugia – Department of Philosophy, Social Sciences, Humanities and Education enabled the realisation of a series of appointments to explore the theme of education to complexity and design: teachers and researchers engaged in the themes of education and training were involved, including Alex Giordano, Maria Elena Menconi, Franco Lorenzoni and Pier Luigi Gentili. The Webinar – called Design Our School – is available on youtube.
Go to http://teacher.dys.codelevel39.it/ to register and use the web app.