ideas@play is where play and design education meets social change. We’re inspiring tomorrow’s change agents and empowering them with the skills and tools to effect positive change in their communities. It all starts by re inventing play and engaging the creative, physical, and technical skills that have been identified as necessary to both adapt and thrive in our complex and ever changing world. We also believe in diverse and dynamic groups.
We see great benefit in connecting young people with leaders in their fields, experts and those in the wise age, the third age of life. Social inclusion, community building and sharing knowledge are a big parts of what we do.
Inspired by people such as Sir Ken Robinson, Laura Seargeant Richardson, Chris Lehmann and Jane McGonigal, we’re encouraging young Australians to embrace the role of designer, use the design tools they already love to use online and off and use social media to deliver the message, create and connect with communities. We are also following the four pillars of play, open environments, flexible tools, modifiable rules and superpowers.
These challenges show that young people can play and produce in the big world now and not have to wait to be graduates or experts.
The Design thinking curriculum we use to guide all our challenges is world class, tried and tested and comes from the K12 project by d.school at Stanford in the USA.
Why we are teaching and using Design Thinking
“Design thinking is multidisciplinary and applicable to any subject.
Design thinking may be applied by anyone to problems of any scope or scale, in any context, using any mode of thought, expression or action and any medium or discipline appropriate to the task at hand. Many different points of view are active during design thinking and any subject may be taught through a design project.
Design thinking integrates imagination and analytical thinking.
Design thinking fosters the exploration, and analysis of relevant information and its effective organization to establish ideas of value regarding a particular context. In contrast, rote learning is hard to remember and use because it has no motivating context of application. Design thinking also teaches how to cope with inadequate information, and uncertainty in order to achieve a goal.
Design thinking emphasizes constructive thinking over factual retention.
Because a design problem may have many different solutions, Design thinking requires ongoing definition, representation, and assessment. It is a continuous learning experience arising out of a need to obtain and correctly apply knowledge to achieve goals that may change as knowledge of the problem and its context is acquired.
Design thinking links information to experience and responsible action.
Design thinking organizes thought to empower effective action, and builds self-esteem and competence by requiring responsible performance in actual circumstances. Knowledge arises naturally from experience making it easier to understand, remember and apply.
Design thinking encourages objective assessment and values.
Design achievements are demonstrable and provide an objective basis for acquiring values. Success is understood through continuous evaluation of progress toward recognized goals and self-assessment is structured by the designer’s own efforts to achieve their goals.
Design thinking promotes cooperation, socialization and humanistic understanding.
Design thinking in groups encourages the development of different perspectives and social skills, including the ability to negotiate, communicate, follow, and lead. Children learn ethical and moral values by directly addressing human needs and desires and sharing their thoughts about what is appropriate and effective.
Design thinking promotes the development of knowledge through creative learning experiences that integrate all modes of intelligence and link learning to effective thought and action in the context experienced by the thinker. It involves consideration of people, resources, relationships, contexts, methods, values and knowledge. It calls on the humanities and the arts to express, communicate and situate ideas and to interpret potentials, on technology to implement them and on science to assess their outcomes. Education emphasizing Design thinking can produce an understanding of art, science, technology and the humanities that is integrated, interdisciplinary and humanistically focused. It can bring art education into contact with mainstream subjects, free technology from its obsolete framework in vocational and industrial arts, and put science to work in concert with the humanities.”
Reposted with permission
This page is under re development. Stay tuned.
Some questions and answers that will help you better understand ideas@play
- Why is play so important to solving issues?
- How long does the challenge actually take over the holiday period?
- The average time to complete the challenge is 2.5 days during 5 half day sessions over two weeks.
- Is there any evidence of this kind of approach having worked in the past?
- Why now?
- Have you done this before?
- What has your 2-year-old taught you in terms of play?
- If all goes to plan with this project, what are you hoping to achieve in your wildest dream?
- Talk us through human-centred design
- Can adults play?
- Who comes up with the issues?
- If you had to pick only one issue to tackle, what would that be?
- Apart from affecting social change, what other skills will the kids learn?
