Last day of design club

Thursday was the final day of design club for the Casey middle school kids. I was very impressed by all of their designs and ideas. There was one boy designed a fully sustainable city. He had solar cars, a water collector, solar panels on the roof, green roofs, they grew their won food, wind turbines, and used sensory watering techniques! He had thought of everything! One girl designed the new green roof of the Casey middle school and even thought of xeriscaping! There were points in the semester where it seemed the kids were learning nothing, but today proved they were. They have picked up on all the lessons and were able to apply them a real life situation!

04/24/08 at Casey

I have to say, I am a bit sad that this week was our last design club before the final party/presentation. It seems as if everything was finally coming together and working well, and now we are finished. I am very proud, however, that we were all able to pull everything together once and for all. I would have been a bit disappointed is every design club was like the first few we had. You just have to focus on what great weeks we have had during the second have of design club. And I would like to say that this week was a great way to finish design club. With the exception of Odie and Harrison, we had our regular children attend, we had a really fun activity that everyone loved, and it seems as if the kids were really having fun. I am really excited for the final presentation and party because I will get to see all the kids from the Wednesday design club (which I never got to attend) and we will get to hear some of the kids talk about their projects and hear some of their ideas. Like I said earlier, I am a bit disappointed that we couldn’t get great results right away, but I do believe that these past weeks have been awesome.

Joanna Kropelnicki

Last Real Casey Meeting

Our last meeting with the Casey kids was mostly a finish up of projects. We had the kids fill out surveys about the club, handed out flyers to invite their parents to our presentation, and let them finish up with their projects as much as the liked. It was a nice relaxed atmosphere. It really showed what kind of a connection we have made with this group of kids over the past few weeks. They were all comfortable and joking around with us. It was a really fun and relaxed day that was a great wrap up for our group.

Chelsea

24 April 2008

Casey Design Club: Week 7

This was our final week at Casey for design club. Overall, I feel like the entire process was a success as all of the kids seemed to enjoy themselves and did in fact learn a lot about sustainability. As we finished up all of the models the students had started the two weeks prior, CU students encircled the group and took down comments and interviews on film. The students explained their models to the camera and were able to point out the multiple elements of sustainable design in their models. We were able to finish up all of the models today, as well as get the green roof designs completed. We even tested a couple of the green roof designs that had irrigation systems in place, and they worked, as planned, to perfection, as well as the amusement of the Casey students. Afterwards, we gathered all the students to complete a comprehensive survey the contained a multitude of questions spanning the course, which covered their feelings about the after school program in general. The results, at least from what I saw, were that the kids enjoyed their time with us, as well as in the after school program, especially towards the end of the course when they were able to get hands-on with design. Next week we look forward to presenting both the CU projects with faculty and personnel, as well as presenting with the Casey students work to Casey and parents/faculty.

Columbine this week, however, was not such a bright turnout, as many of the younger students seemed easily drawn off task with an absent teacher. However, at least for my group, we were able to finish up our sustainable communities within our group. I was even able to draw out a few original ideas from my kids on what they could do in their communities to achieve a more sustainable site. Next week should be back to normal, however, as their teacher will be back in charge and should prove positive in allowing us to wrap up out models with the Columbine students.

-Ian

April 22nd Columbine ES & 23rd Casey MS

This week was very interesting at both Columbine Elementary & Casey Middle because they both seemed to go in different directions this week. Last week we did not go to Columbine and this week the second graders had a substitute on the day that we worked with them. I think that the sub represented a sense that “we don’t have to do anything” to the kids because to some degree, they were out of control. We worked with clean child-proof clay this week and some of the kids put it in their mouths and were spitting it at each other. They seemed to have lost their interest in the actual design process which was a little disappointing because when we last went two weeks ago, they were on task and excited for the whole hour. In contrast, we accomplished a lot this today at Casey MS. I worked with a young man named David who has attended almost every day at Design Club so far. He began coming on both Wednesdays and Thursdays a few weeks ago and really has become excited about designing his community, that he named "D-Tville." I was astonished to see how much he had done on the Thursday of last week when I was not around. He added gardens with soil, a few homes, and roads to his sustainable community. He was excited about explaining the sustainable concepts to the CU students making films and he seemed to really take a liking to this project. Next week will be our final presentation at Casey and I’m excited to see how David presents his project that he has worked so hard on. He should really be proud of it, because I’m very proud of the progress he has made over the last several months.

Brett

April 22nd at Columbine

Today, I and a few other students from the class took a trip to Columbine Elementary for the second week. The activities for this week were simply to finish up the community models we began the last time we met. However, as we concluded last time, we needed to incorporate more ideas of sustainability into the community models. This task, however, is very difficult when working with this group of kids. It may be their age, or it may be the fact that their regular teacher was absent today, but the children were rowdier than ever! It was hard enough to get them to stay on the topic of the models without fighting over materials with the other groups. So since we had to spend most of our time trying to control the children, it was hard to try to teach them about sustainability. We did, however, get the children thinking about trees, and how they can benefit the community. Overall, whether or not the few hours we have spent with the second graders proved to be successful, it seems that everyone had a really great time building the models. We are planning to meet with the children one more time next week to compare everyone’s models and talk about sustainable communities.

Joanna Kropelnicki

April 17th at Casey

As we are nearing the end of the after school design club, I believe that the last few weeks have been the most successful weeks of the whole semester. As of last Thursday, we have about 5 Casey students who have come every week for the last 3 weeks. As far as this last week goes, I believe that the children love the hands on activities and the one on one interaction with the CU students. The activity for this last week was successful in a few different ways. Not only did we have enough Casey students to have the ideal student to student ratio, but the kids also had a lot of freedom in what they decided to do. Unlike every other design club meeting, this week, the children had their choice of one of 3 activities: continue their community model, create a physical green roof design, or create a green roof design using sketch up. This is the factor that the kids loved the most. Of course it helped a ton that we had Dominoes delivered to the school. But overall, I believe that the Design Club meetings are getting better every week, I just wished that we had more time with the Casey students.

Joanna Kropelnicki

Continuing Success

So this last week we seem to have sustained our success and our numbers, which I think largely has to do with the projects we are taking part in. This week, students had more free reign for what they wanted to do, participating in either the continued construction of their previous projects, or the use of SketchUp, with several of the students were certainly very excited to start. I stayed behind with the students building models, assisting them as need be and watching the learning experience. From those who tried to put together a green roof to those who were still wanting to finish up their towns, the students seemed to actually be having fun while learning something useful about sustainability and green design. Not only was the experience fun and beneficial for the Casey students, it certainly seemed to be important for the CU students as well, as we were all interested in the outcomes of the projects, while enjoying spending time with the students. It seems clear to me that the secret to the success of Design club is allowing students to choose for themselves what they want to do, and doing something hands on. As a side note, however, I think it was a very good idea to start providing snacks, because the pizza this week was very popular with everyone involved, causing the kids to get ramped up a bit before beginning, and providing a bit of a morale booster to always hungry college students :).
-Austin-

GREEN ROOF

Over all Thursday’s design club went well! We had all of the same kids back, who have by now become regulars. They were all very excited to begin the green roof projects. Most of them had opted to build their model instead of using sketch-up. However, there were two boys who knew sketch-up and seemed to be very interested in using the program. One of the kids got straight to work as soon as we got into the lab. But the other boy most fooled around. It was clear that he knew how the program worked, but wasn’t so interested in the actual project. It wasn’t until near the end that he started even working on a design. Interestingly enough, the reason he had not shown an interest in the design was because he didn’t understand why he was being asked to do so. He began coming later in the semester, so he never received all the information most others had. This taught me that in any process where people are allowed to come and go freely it is always important to keep track of what each person has been a part of. This way no one gets confused or left behind. - Sam

Week six--Continuation of Community Models

I remember that earlier in our class we had learned that the way to get the most out of the participatory process, both in the number of participants and the quality of input that they provide, is to develop a relationship with your participants. This is the third week that I have worked with the same boy and I think that between us we are able to achieve more than I had working with a different kid every week. The student I worked with seemed very interested in continuing with is recycle material community model and we spent the entirety of our day working with that. We came up with new ideas on how to build his water tower that would allow for the community to be more efficient. He added solar panels onto the roofs of both the water tower and the recreation center. We discussed how he would want to present his community at the open house and how he would like to describe it to get other people excited about new design ideas. I really feel that our design club has taken a big turn around and is beginning to attract some attention and even begin to spark an interest in kids to get more involved in the future.

-Brittany