This year has seen a move from an initial ‘Maker Movement’ focus across the school to an emphasis on the process of ‘Design Thinking’. Our initial spark for the move towards incorporating Maker Spaces into our school environment came after seeing Gary Stager give presentations on the Maker Movement as part of an EduTech Technology Conference in 2014 and Vivid Workshops in 2015. The staff members involved were initially inspired to introduce a more structured Maker Movement to the school, which resulted in the introduction of several Maker Spaces and Coding Clubs.

The student uptake and engagement in these clubs in the latter half of 2015 was very high and this encouraged us to pursue this goal. However, we soon realised that there was greater potential to be harnessed by embedding ‘making’ into our existing curriculum framework. This led us to explore the process of Design Thinking. We have used the methodology of Design Thinking to explore our built environment, the states of matter, using responsible design to address important issues and to fly drones. We are proud of the journey that the school has undertaken and we are looking forward to where Design Thinking takes us.

For this year’s AIS STEM Symposium Sam Eddowes, Saxon Krause, Conor Sheehy and Tristan Henry represented the school by sharing their Design Thinking experiences and solutions with the state-wide AIS community.  They explained the Design Thinking Process that is specific to Lindfield and reflected on how this process has assisted in structuring their thinking when solving a problem.  Sue Gough, Sam Watson, Pascal Czerwenka and Carol Peterson led a workshop on our journey in developing a design thinking culture in our school community.

Carol Peterson – Year 3 Teacher