A Successful Day at Casey

This Wednesday, we created communities out of recyclables with the middle schoolers. I was very pleased to see how involved the kids were with this activity. In the group that I worked with, we let the kids take total control. They asked for help when they needed it (mainly cutting out windows or drawing on film canister cars). They had great ideas, starting from simple then progressing to the complicated. The outcome was a great and complex little main street. They wanted to get into the details before the basics, so we sneakily advised them otherwise. They even went as far as to make solar panels out of hersey kisses wrappers and an electric car charging station! It was great. I can't really find a way to relate this experience to what Michael Duffin was lecturing about. He lectured about what we do in our class, but on a much larger scale. Same idea, but bigger. From what I can see,we relate by the increase in environmental awareness in the Casey kids.
Chelsea
4 April 2008

Model Making

Yesterday actually went really well. It was a surprise to show up to six Casey students. The activity was a good way to bond with the kids and just hang out, while at the same time trying to touch on a some aspects of sustainable design. I think that the kids really enjoyed doing this activity because it did not involve too much thinking, and was a fun and social project. I think we could have been more effective on the teaching of city planning if everyone was to work on one big model, however it seemed like most the students wanted to do their own... which worked out and was still a learning experience. I was really surprised by some of the creative things the kids came up with putting into their cities. One kid implemented a space center, another put the wind farm on top of buildings because he argued it would be windier higher up and therefore more efficient. In the end they were thinking of sustainable factors that play into cities, so all in all it was a success.
-kaley

new beginnig

Today’s after school program was far more successful than any others this semester. For the first time ever, the ratio of Casey to CU students was almost 1:1. Not only this, but the kids seemed to be genuinely interested in our activity. I believe this was due to the new flyers that had been sent out to the entire school. The flyers were more exciting than the others, promising fun and prizes. Today we had the children design their ideal community, while keeping in mind ecology and sustainability. Some of the kids included solar panels, windmills, green roofs, and their own road system. I hope this was an indication of how things will continue to happen.
Today I also attended the Michael Duffin talk. Although the subject was very interesting, the delivery was not. The way he presented the information was not like an academic scholar presenting his findings, but as a sales man selling his product. Anyone who did not already know about the topic would immediately be turned off to the idea because of the sales man mentality.


sam

Hopefully a turn for the better

This Wednesday at Design Club there were a total of five students, which is an improvement from the two that showed up the previous week. The session started off a bit slow because we had two new students who had to be introduced to the entire group of CU students. I am not sure if this was the best way to grab the attention of the new students, but it is important to create familiarity right away. Two of the girls who had been to a previous Design Club began the project of building their ideal city, which turned out to be a great activity, engaging the students while reminding them of ways in which to be sustainable and energy efficient. The two girls were very meticulous about their design, including a major road through the center of the town, a station for hybrid cars to re-charge, and solar panels to give electricity to their buildings. The other group of students went about the making of their town in a different way but was still conscious of energy efficient ways to give electricity to their town. The main logo for their town, once you entered through the solar paneled entranceway, was "Please Recycle." Overall, this activity went quite well, maybe the best one we have experienced so far. I think that hands-on projects that include building, manipulation, and creativity are the best way to engage the students while teaching them about sustainability and green design.

Stevi

Design Club Wed 19th

The Design Club this time around did not turn out as well as we had all hoped. Only two students showed up in comparison with the ten CU students who were there. We were supposed to do a sustainable scavenger hunt, where the students were to go around the school finding ways in which their school was either sustainable or not. We did do this activity with the two students who came, but the affect was not the same. They showed us around their school and we looked for ways in which the school could be improved upon and also for ways in which it was already energy efficient. The students seemed to be a bit overwhelmed by the ratio of CU students to Casey students, but did relax a bit once we started the activity. Hopefully the next session will bring more students so the projects can be more interactive and benficial to both the middle school students and to us as well.

Stevi

Interviewing the girls

For a different class, an assignment required me to interview a child about his or her primary modes of transportation (mainly to and from school) and about their neighborhood and sense of place. This was made much easier since I already knew of some pretty cool Casey kids who would be completely willing to partake in this type of interview. My partner and I interviewed three girls from our Wednesday group. The first half of the questions we asked were primarily about how they travel. They all said that they prefer biking because it's healthy for them and for the environment. They all said that weather is a big factor in if they get rides or not, but when they do, they carpool with one another. This showed me a bit of background to how they came to be so environmentally knowledgeable: their parents. It was great when one of their mothers showed up and told us about how the girls were raised and how they have all be taught to compost, eat organic, grow as much of their food as possible, etc., all proving why these girls are so keen on keep nature above any other element of design. The rest of the questions were about community. They told us a lot about the Boulder community that we do not see as college students and could never see unless we had grown up here. They are given a lot of freedom, they know all of their neighbors, and their neighborhoods function in what seems to be a small co-op manner. Again, this information was helpful to understand why the design in the manner that they do. Neighborhoods are important to them, unlike many kids who don't feel any sort of attachment to where they live because they aren't allowed to experience it. It is also interesting to me that these girls seem so much older than most kids their age. I can't help but wonder if its due to the great amount of safe freedom they've been given while growing up. I'm very happy I was able to do this interview with them since it made me understand so much (that I did not expect out of it!) about how they function within the club as young designers.
2 April 2008
-Chelsea

Late Post/Looking Back

On March 10th, one of the architects came to speak to the Casey Students in our Design Club. All of the kids seemed captivated when he was speaking, although I honestly think he was not doing the best job speaking to them. He presented it in a very uninterested way as if the kids weren't worth his best 'show'. But, nonetheless, the kids thought it was great. Especially when he did the three-d model example. Afterwards, we broke into groups to let the kids design a portion of the future Casey campus. The girls who I worked with were very into this and had some great ideas. They're very nature conscientious kids so a lot of their design ideas revolved around how they could manipulate nature into their environment. I was disappointed with the architect's reaction when the girls were showing him their design plan. I know that some of the ideas were impractical, but at least it was showing some primary concerns that they have, but he sort of (again) acted uninterested. But they were still thoroughly pleased with the whole day. This design process I saw then showed through again today while they were designing their recycled community. Same values, principles, and nature infatuation; same important elements overlooked (but added in with sneaky suggestions by us), same disregard for design "rules" that most designers hold fast to. They already have a solid foundation for how they design which is amazing at such a young age. This shouldn't shock me since I think a lot of artistically minded kids have this foundation at this age, but I have overlooked it and forgotten what it was like to be in 6th grade. This must be why designers do not find the input of kids to be important or substantial enough for serious consideration, but really these ideas are totally worthy.
Posted 2 April 2008
Supposed to be 10 March 2008...
Chelsea

Recruiting

Last Wednesday I went in the morning and did recruiting in the different classrooms. We went to all the different classroom, but Kaley and I went to about 15. When we went to the different classrooms we got a really good response from all the different students. It seemed like the sixth graders were much more interested in the club then the classes full of eighth graders and the seventh grade classrooms were somewhere in between. The sixth grade classrooms all seemed really into the after school club and their teachers were really encouraging them to participate. All of the teachers seemed really excited about the design club.
I was really surprised to hear that the turnout was less then usual in the next sessions. Just from going around the school I though that we would definitely have atleast an additional 5 students. I think that a lot of the kids have things going on after school because a couple of the students told us that they could not participate due to previous arrangements. I hope that the recruiting will work this week, but we will just have to wait and see.
Laura