Maker festival workshop: create your own learning style

Maker Festival Poster
Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - 4:00am

Program Description

Had enough of school? Too many hours in brightly lit classrooms trying to stay awake and absorb what is written on the board? Here is your chance to design your own learning activities, tools and ways of learning that suits you the best.

This interactive, half day workshop will help both students (and teachers, if you dare) to envision how 21st century learning (what your school principals are talking about at conferences) could happen in a fun, hands-on and way more interactive way. We wont just design space or furniture though, but also use all the tools that you usually cant bring into the classroom, from game consoles to phones and whatever works for you.

There are many different ways of learning, although typically at your school they will stress mostly learning though text and numbers. Some of us learn the best by doing things, through playing, making, drawing, enacting, singing, and dancing. It is our conviction that there is no preferred way of learning, just that our schools have traditionally embraced text and numbers (which are also convenient to manage or assess).

However, the kind of learning that society now thinks is important (the so called 21st century skills) is best learned in different ways then now typical of your school. For example, you can’t learn to collaborate by reading a book about it. Or try to become more creative by exercising equations. In this workshop, we will help you to create your own learning style and give you the evidence to your teachers how you want to learn best. Together we will make a case that it is not you who is bored by school, but that school are in fact boring, and need to change to deserve your interest.

In this workshop, we will use so called design-thinking techniques to develop your learning step by step. First we will show you how to interview each other and write down what it is that you like best. Then we will use these insights to develop lots of ideas, related to space, tools, interactive and whatever comes up. Taking the best ideas forward, we will build (or make) and test models, mock ups of all kinds and record how this works in a movie, of your own making. Expect lots of messiness, making, improvising and work; don't expect lectures, classroom and lengthy instructions.

Venue & Address: 
205 Richmond Street West Suite 602
Keywords: 

Make Your Own Wearable Workshop by Imagination Catalyst

Image of a dress with a digital Twitter bird across the front
Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - 8:00pm to 10:00pm

Want to learn more about wearables? Interested in working with conductive thread and fabrics? OCAD University is proud to present a Maker Festival satellite event in making your own wearables. In this workshop participants will learn the basics of electronic circuits, sewing with conductive thread and working with conductive fabric. At the end of the session, participants will make a light up electronic cuffs that they can then take home and light up the night with!

This workshop will be led and facilitated by: Robert Tu

Robert Tu is a graduate of OCAD University from the graphic design program. He also has a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo. He then worked as an engineer for a number of years before transitioning into business development at IBM. Since graduating from OCADU he founded MeU, a wearable technology company that is developing socially interactive clothing. As a designer, entrepreneur and engineer, Robert is interested in exploring the way we perceive clothing and how wearable technology can change our behaviours and interactions with each other and our environment.

Questions? Email: schen@ocadu.ca
This workshop has limited seating - RSVP before seats run out!

Venue & Address: 
100 McCaul Street, Toronto, ON M5T 1W1 Room 284 (Up the spiral stairs, to your left)
Website: 
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/make-your-own-wearable-by-imagination-catalyst-tickets-17871036752
Email: 
schen@ocadu.ca
Phone: 
416-977-6000 ext. 4364
Cost: 
FREE