Young people as design partners
Reading an interesting article at the moment by Allison Druin (University of Maryland) on the role that young people can play in the design of new educational technologies. Often when we design learning environments we assume that the “teacher knows best” and our involvement of learners is, at best, tokenistic. Druin argues there are major benefits in including young people as design partners when designing technological tools for learning:
We cannot expect very young people to program as well as computer scientists. We cannot expect them to know what educational goals need to be covered in a school curriculum as well as a teacher does. But we can expect children to tell us what excites and bores them, what helps them learn, and what can be used in their homes and schools. We can expect children to be creative, honest collaborators. Children can also help us adults to think beyond the traditional needs of the workplace. Instead of productivity, efficiency or cost saving, they can help adults think about tools that can let people laugh, enable creativity and support collaborative learning.
Druin’s argument surely has implications for how we design our VLE’s home page and other pages. How do we involve learners in creating an exciting and collaborative learning environment that is centred on their needs and requirements rather than us as teachers?
The role of children in the design of new technology by Allison Druin Behaviour and Information Technology, 2002, vol. 21, no. 1, 1-25
