Design thinking can be a powerful tool for innovation. Design thinking is an educational approach that stresses creative problem solving for students with the added value of an entrepreneurial outlook.
Today, game design has become a separate, dedicated field of study with some people choosing to focus solely on design over writing code. The concepts of experience, engagement, and enjoyment are fundamentally important to both players and developers.
Players want a fun experience that serves as a temporary distraction, transports them to a different world, or just helps them kill time in the grocery checkout line. To the game creator, the players’ enjoyment is tied directly to the success of the game.
No matter how you decide to learn game design, the most important thing is applying that knowledge. Creating your own games is a great way to grow your skills as a game designer and it also helps you gain a better understanding of what it means to write game code.
Understanding game design from the inside out will make you a well-rounded designer who will be able to work well with others.
Creativity has the potential to help reform education, and yet we have educated our students out of creativity with our factory model classrooms and high stakes testing (Robinson & Aronica, 2015). With the maker movement finding its way into our schools, we have a chance to use design thinking as a way to teach and develop complex skills of creativity.
Creativity can and must be taught if we are to prepare students for a world that requires innovators (Wagner & Compton, 2012). This design thinking must be approached with intentionality.
Giving students a real-life problem to solve, as an intentional reason to use design thinking, changes the quality of the learning. Students are not learning because a teacher simply told them the information they are required to remember, students are learning because they need and want to solve a problem to make the world a better place.
This type of design thinking has the power to transform students into global citizens committed to creative solutions to solve global problems.
Design thinking is active and inclusive. And kids are embracing design thinking with gusto. Schools around the world are embracing design thinking as a new way of learning and a way to increase student engagement.
Have your school embraced the design thinking? If not, consult MindBox!
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