Students as Designers

Students are designers is such a vital principle when designing lessons for students.  So far, we’ve learned how to be teachers as designers and how to incorporate tools and technology in our designs.  Now, we’ve got to consider how to design our lessons and activities to allow students to be designers themselves.  We’ve now shifted our lessons and activities to allow them to take ownership of their learning.  This is a great connection to Vygotsky’s ZPD.  After all that we’ve taught our students, we are now able to let them explore and learn on their own and guide them as needed.  

When allowing students to be designers, we must consider all that we’ve learned in this course in connection to Vygotsky’s ZPD and allow students to take ownership of their learning and support as needed.  We must model and coach students to be designers themselves.  We must model a creative spirit in order to develop designers who are flexible and perceptive.  As teachers as designers, we must consider all the approaches, processes, techniques, and technologies to allow students to be designers themselves.  Our designs for students should allow them to use their imagination, interdisciplinary, and creation-oriented.  If we do these things, we are doing our best to allow students to be designers.

This impacts my practice because it allows me to be mindful of what I’m modeling to students everyday.  In order for my students to be creative designers themselves, I must model a creative spirit that allows them to see what creative designers look like.  They’ll develop as flexible and perceptive designers if they’re given a model that does just that.  My teaching will incorporate opportunities for students to be in their ZPD.  As a second grade teacher, it’s challenging at times to allow students to figure things out on their own, especially when they get frustrated or upset.  I must model how to be a critical thinking and designer so students are able to do the same thing themselves.