Making of an ‘Inspired By Nature’ Digital Genius Challenge.
This blog reviews the process that one group of students underwent from attending the introductory WWF workshop to presenting their ideas at the Annual Education Summit.
This challenge was conceived in partnership with our friends & experts at WWF.Uk with this particular Science and Nature Challenge is specifically targeted at KS2 students.
What is the actual challenge?
The ‘Inspired by Nature’ Challenge poses two questions:
1) How can we invent new products which reduce the impact on the Earth’s fragile resources?
2) How can we learn and mimic nature to make these new inventions sustainable?
Task: Design a sustainable invention that is ‘inspired by nature’ that has mimimum impact on the world’s resources. Present your work in a ‘logbook format’ which shows how you developed your initial sketches through to a working prototype.
Step 1: Register for the challenge with Digital Genius.
Step 2: Book an introductory workshop held at the Living Planet Centre, HQ of WWF.Uk. This is a free two hour workshop which is led by the education team from WWF.
Step 3: Attend the WWF.uk ‘Inspired by Nature’ workshop at the Living Planet Centre. This invaluable interactive and hands on session will give students the knowledge and inspiration to spark ideas.
The interactive activities included in the workshop are both collaborative and thought provoking. Digital tools allow the students to capture their ideas as they begin to consider how to develop their solution. Green Screen footage, interviews, note taking are combined into an ePub document created in Pages or BookCreator.
The Venus Fly Trap is an example of how a group of students began to develop the concept of designing a mechanism for capturing plastics from the oceans. The flash of inspiration started as a discussion
Step 4: Back at School the student’s ideas should continue to be developed. This can be in a variety of ways:
* continuing to add to and update initial ePub document (BookCreator, Pages, Keynote, Explain Everything)
*capture video interviews of team on how developments are progressing (Camera, Clips, iMovie)
*creating an animation from a line sketch drawing as a prototype (Keynote, Clips, iMovie)
* making a working model of prototype (3D modelling)
*annotated notes to explain prototype development (Keynote, Pages, Thinglink)