Title: ReNuBots Brainstorming
Purpose: Generate and develop multiple ideas for environmental intervention robots that are powered by renewable energy.
Description:
For your main project, you will design a robot that, in some way, addresses the environmental issues that you and your studio-mates researched and brainstormed in the previous assignments. Since this robot is operating in a far-flung location, you will design it to be powered by a form of renewable energy that can be accessed in its specific location.
Instructions:
- Working individually, take three combinations of environmental solutions and energy sources of interest to you. These ideas should come from the research results of the Energy Sources and Environmental Problems assignments. From these combinations, generate three robot ideas for each combination, for a total of nine ideas. Draw a sketch of each idea and a short sentence to describe the intent. (20 minutes)
- With a partner, share your ideas, and discuss to develop more ideas or the best ideas. Coaches will roam to support your brainstorming effort. (20 minutes)
- For the three ideas that are the most intriguing, refine previous or create three new sketches and descriptive sentences. (15 minutes)
- Post these sketches up on the wall. All students will talk about the ideas and sketches that they posted. Perhaps new ideas come out of this discussion; they should be added to the list on the board as well. (20 minutes)
- At the end of the brainstorming session, each student should take 2 post it notes and write their name on them. The student should place these notes next to two project ideas that interest them and they would like to pursue. (5 minutes)
Deliverables:
Scan your sketches. Pin these sketches up on the wall, and post the twelve sketches with their accompanying descriptions in the Responses tab (above).
After class, teachers will review the ideas and students interested in them, and assign projects and paired students to pursue these ideas.
At the end of this activity, the group will have created a collective pin-up brainstorming board. With this resource, the studio facilitator should take time to partner project pairs and create project folders before the next studio session. The next studio session will begin with the sharing of project concepts and project partnerships.