BRAIN STORMING AND MIND MAPPING ACTIVITY FOR A CHALLENGE/DESIGN BRIEF ACTIVITY

cser#Apps3

At many PD days in our school we use the brain storming and mind mapping activities and these have always been a huge success and help ensure every perspective from primary and secondary as well as options teachers views and allowed for. This type of activity allows for all levels of learners to be a part of.

In this lesson students would be provided with a challenge or specific design brief.  It could be an imaginary client who requires a particular app design or some requirement to make an app for a particular purpose.  One example of this would be that students might redesign an app for users who are vision impaired. The first steps would be a brain storming and mind mapping activity.

Step 1: Group students up – say 5 or 6 to a group.

Step 2 : Give each group a blank A3 piece of butchers paper.

Step 3: Each group is given a different coloured  marker pens.

Step 4 : Give the students a set period of time – say 5 minutes initially to brainstorm and write what  comes to mind down on their paper. (They can have a selected scribe for this process.)

Step 5: At the end of 5 minutes the papers are  rotated to the next group to continue brainstorming and add to the paper they receive. Using different coloured marker pens for each group means that as the papers are rotated around the room the different colours will be represented by the different groups.

Step 6: This process is repeated  until all papers have visited each group and the original piece of paper is back with the group it started with.

Step 7: Common ideas for the different groups and highlighted and shared with the class and put up for all to see and discuss.