The Sorrell Foundation is launching the YOUNGDESIGNCLUB to give pupils and their teachers an exciting new resource to inform and stimulate knowledge and debate about design.

The YOUNGDESIGNCLUB is free to UK primary and secondary schools, to run in lunch breaks or as an after-school activity. Each meeting will focus on a piece of design from any discipline, providing a growing menu of over 100 design stories. They will be structured around presentations and supported by flexible resources, including print, film and audio materials and PowerPoint slides (available as downloads). This will be followed by a discussion, and the pupil members will have the opportunity to produce their own crit in response, the best of which will be published by the YOUNGDESIGNCLUB. There will also be an annual awards ceremony at Somerset House, London.

www.thesorrellfoundation.com/young_design_club.php

Are you a teacher interested in running the YOUNGDESIGNCLUB? To register your interest, please complete the online registration form. The club will begin in January 2011 and the Sorrell Foundation will contact you in September with detailed information.

Twitter is an amazing way to discover new and interesting information. Here are links to some of the things that I have found recently:

• Design 2010 – An online exhibition celebrating the achievements of students in Design and Technology. Shared by Gareth Davies.
• Aviary Education – Aviary, who produce lots of fantastic online tools, are now offering a free service for education users. Shared by Paulo Simões.
• History Pin – A digital time machine that allows users to pin their own old photos onto modern Street View scenes. Shared by Claire Jones. Here’s a Youtube video which explains more:

• Diary of an Ofsted Inspection - Michael Shepherd recalls his recent experiences with Ofsted! Shared by Simon Haughton.
• Open ClipArt Library – An archive of clip art that can be used for free by anyone. Shared byProfteresa.
• Augmented Reality – If you’ve heard what augmented reality is, but you’re not quite sure what it does, watch this Youtube video, shared by CommonCraft:

What have you found on Twitter recently?

Image – Run!

www.cbelearning.com is designed to support both students and teachers with the Diploma in Construction and the Built Environment curriculum. This resource will help bring the construction industry, and roles within it, to life through a variety of interactive learning experiences.

www.cbelearning.com

The site allows students to explore real construction situations, engaging activities, tasks and roles. They can follow the construction process from consultation, design, build to operation, applying their knowledge and working together to solve problems as they create their own building. It also has lots of ideas and outline lesson plans for teachers to use.

Do you love baking cakes? Or making bread, cookies or other tasty food? If you do, get involved in National Baking Week from 19th to 25th October 2009.

The National Baking Week site is a wonderful resource for schools, containing recipes, teaching packs for KS1 and KS2, baking tips, a free baking booklet and online games. There is also a national competition running where schools can win £350 worth of Pyrex equipment for their school.

Ministers today launched a fun, interactive website and poster campaign to encourage children to give their views on play and play areas as part of the first ever national consultation on children’s play.

The website and posters give children the chance to design their own play space using playground favourites such as see-saws and round-a-bouts mixed with more modern structures such as wooden climbing walls.

On the website children can choose from a variety of settings to reflect their local areas, with a choice of urban, rural or sports fields on which to build their ideal play area. In order to add equipment to their play space children must answer a series of questions around the idea of play. The more questions answered the more points they earn to spend on designing their own play space.

The views of children and young people will play a crucial part in this consultation, and it is important that as many as possible are able to contribute their ideas. This short, online activity is aimed at 8 to 13 year olds, will ensure that children can give their views while at the same time being creative and having fun. All the consultation questions have been drafted using child–friendly language.

Link: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/playspace/

There are a number of Design and Technology websites available for children and teachers to use. Most are aimed at KS3/4 but still have some excellent resources. Technology Student and Design and Technology are good examples of these sites, but both contain good sheets and diagrams/videos suitable for upper KS2.

One of the best Design and Technology websites has to be that of DATA (Design And Technology Association), covering the subject from the Foundation Stage to the Secondary Strategy. All have examples of good practice, planning; links with literacy, numeracy, science… There is also a whole page of ‘challenges and competitions’ that you could put into place at your school. The page provides a list of links to Challenge websites, but these do take a lot of time and effort to get up and running!

The Nuffield Foundation also have suitable alternatives to the QCA schemes of work, all with adequate planning and resources. The Welsh NGFL site has excellent resources available for the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 QCA Units.

So…there are plenty of D&T resources available online. I always get questioned about there being a lack of websites for D&T and I hope this provides a good starting point. Also, if you know of any that enhance learning or save you time(!) please add a comment!

Running out of activities to do with the Year 6?  Here’s a few simple but highly entertaining and fun activites that I have done this week.  The children have really enjoyed and yet it requires nothing more than lots of newspaper, sellotape, glue and weights.

Activity 1: Create the tallest freestanding tower out of newspaper that can hold the most weight.  Children start with 1 complete newspaper.

Time Limit: 30 minutes
Initial points: 1000

Points to be lost
1m of sellotape: 50points.
Glue stick: 200points.
Extra newspaper: 500 points.

Points to be gained:
1 point for every gram held before tower collapses
1 point for every cm

Activity 2: Create a bridge out of newspaper (Must have height >30cm and width >60cm) that can hold the most weight.  Children start with 1 complete newspaper.

Time Limit: 45-60 minutes
Initial points: 1000

Points to be lost
1m of sellotape: 50points.
Glue stick: 200points.
Extra newspaper: 500 points.

Points to be gained:
1 point for every gram held before bridge collapses
500points if the bridge meets required height and width
500points if the bridge is able to freestand for 1 minute (no sellotaping bridge to floor!)

Activity 3: Create a band and play a well known tune out of only newspaper and art straws.

Time Limit: 45-60 minutes
Points: To be decided and the quality of the instruments and the quality of the tune played!

Yesterday while being ‘Big Teacher’ in the classroom I set the children the task of designing and building a bridge that could hold the greatest weight from a newspaper for an observed Maths lesson.  To start the lesson off I showed the children the different types of bridge that they could build and examples in real life.  One website really caught my attention and had the children engrossed while they spent 10 minutes at the start of the lesson researching how they were going to build their bridge.

Building Big (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/index.html) is a website for an Amercian (I think) TV show and has detailed information on the building of bridges,  domes, skyscrapers, dams and tunnels.  There are detailed explanations for children on how the structures are built along with a few interesting games.  There are also links to other relevant websites on the Internet.

During the activity the children where ‘charged’ points for using sellotape and string etc but earned points for ‘gap the bridge covered’ and amount of weight it held.  The children came up with various designs including standard beam bridges, a truss bridge and a simple suspension bridge.  The maths came from the measuring, weighing and discussing of the best way to get the most points.

The winning group produced a newspaper truss bridge with a small role of sellotape that held over 10kg!  Not that’s not bad!