A short idea of what I have collected, What I am doing, And, Where I intend to take it all...
My brief... briefly... We were asked to find a problem in our local area and I chose to look into why children don’t seem to know the names of any of the trees. It all started when I overheard a conversation between a granny and her two grandchildren who were about 7 and 9 years old... It became glaringly obvious after talking to neighbours, parents and teachers that children are becoming less and less interested in the natural world around them... I think this is imporatnt.
So far.... I’ve interviewed teachers and looked into the way children learn both by asking teachers and by observing children where I work. I have looked into what is available in the way of teaching resources for the classroom and at home. I have looked into websites, apps, packs, downloadable sheets and anything else I could find... It’s all just so rubbish... I want to improve this.
How do children at the age of 10 learn best? I asked several teachers at a school how they believed children learnt most effectively. I looked at what type of learners they believed the children were and what methods they believed were most important.
Kinesthetic Learners: Learn by making and doing things. Visual Learners: Learn by watching others and looking at diagrams and images.
“Learning has to be repetative but not obviously so or it gets boring”
Auditory Learners: Learn by listening and repeating. Music and lectures. Read and Write Learners: Learn quite literally by reading and writing down notes.
“Children are most engaged when they don’t realise they’re being taught something.” The graphic to the right shows which skills and areas they thought were the most important for a child to be working on whilst learning any one given thing.
The chart above is representation of the answers I got from asking teachers how best they thought children learnt. It seems really obvious that children learn best when they can get involved in some way, either with something they can create or with something they can immerse themselves in.
It also seems really key to teachers that whilst the children are doing an activity that it expands their knowledge in more than just one skill.
Learning & Playing Museum of London Docklands: Case Study To really understand my target audience I needed to make observation around children to understand how they learnt skills, played and how they dealt with other children. The children that visit the museum play area are all under 12 years of age. There is a soft play area for really small children and a more interactive area for older children. As this part of my project involves children I cannot take any photographs but will rely on images I have found , observational drawings and notes that I have made during my session with the children.
What’s out there?
and there’s the classic egg box seed tray identification. Well there’s this app provided by Virginia Tech which only helps if you’re in the USA and in Virginia and is definitely not aimed at children. All of these companies also provide packs of some kind to identify trees.
Nature Dectives Nature Detctives is the website run by the Woodland Trust. Just like the majority of the websites i’ve found, it may be brightly coloured but it lacks any kind of visual appeal. Minus the top navigation bar pictures and kept to a minimum and the rest of the website is in a list format with downloadable ‘tree identification packs’. Plus: • The website is brightly coloured which should appeal to children. Minus: • Text Heavy which would put aW lot of children off. • The Navigation is muddled and unclear. There seems to be no distinct order to the menu on the left hand side. • The logo is dull and uninspiring. • Not very interactive or involved. • The website name sounds fun, ‘Nature Detectives’ , the wbsite seems disjointed from this name. • Not clear who the website is aimed at. Is it children or adults? Interesting: • Variation in the downloadable packs such as ‘Autumn’ or ‘Christmas’.
Case Study
What do they offer? A Huge Postive: The really major postive about Nature detectives is that they offer such a wide range of tree identification packs. The packs are very simple to understand and once printed they just require you to go out a do the detective work, ie look for the leaves. A Huge Amount More Negatives: The packs are so easy to use and so underdemanding that children just won’t engage with them. There is no reward from finding all the leaves apart from having a nicely ticked off sheet. The packs focus in on just one skill and don’t think about any other skills the children could be building on whilst doing the activities.
Case Study
My Idea My idea is to make a 3D puzzle for children that can either be made alone or with the help of other children or parents depending on the childs age. Specifically I want to aim this tree at 9-11 year olds and I hope to test the idea with this age group. The puzzle will consist of the 10 most commonly found leaves in London. The Colour of the tree will change as you build upwards. It will start with a brown at the bottom and work it’s way up the tree going through reds, oranges, yellows and finally greens. Each leaf will be repeated a number of times throughout the tree but will be show in different colours as you progress up the tree. Each leaf will have a couple of slots where another leaf will fit. Around each slot will be another colour such as blue. The blue slot needs to be matched with a certain type of leaf, for example, Blue might relate to a Sycamore Tree Leaf. The reason I believe this tree will be so successful is due to the fact that it incorporates so many other skills into it, aside from tree identification. Those skills are: Teamwork, Creativity, Building / Making, Repetition, Problem Solving, Play, Communication. Not only this but it also looks at shape and colour in a very simple format.
Final Idea
Prototypes Here comes the difficult bit The first question to contemplate was what to make the tree out of. So far I have tried making the tree out of acetate sheets, paper and cardboard. The two most successful prototypes are show to the right hand side. The one on the left is made from a thin card and the one on the right is made from a thin corrugated cardboard. I really like the idea of making the tree out of wood or plastic but this will be a lot more expensive and I don’t think it will make the result any better at the moment. For the age group I am aiming this at and for it to be cheaply made and easily available to them I would prefer it to be made of card. Problems: Finding the right weight of card is difficult to make sure it is the perfect level between sturdiness, aesthetic quality and stability.