The Access to Justice Legal Apps Challenge Modules intend to get participants to think of new ways to use technology to better increase access to justice, and to ultimately design a concept for a legal app to address an access to justice issue.

The set of five modules are intended to operate as a “mini-course” for Ontario high-school students. Each module contains background information on the topic to help instructors prepare for the lessons. The background information has sources to support instructors and students delving further into topics of interest. The modules are designed so that they can be used in either an in-person or virtual learning environment.

In the Future of Electric Transportation Design Challenge - a soup-to-nuts curriculum toolkit from Construct - you'll ask young people to find new and novel ways to increase use & equitable access to electric vehicles.

This comprehensive toolkit is intended for classroom teachers and other educators interested in running a multi-week or full-term design challenge with students. The guide is written with 8th-9th graders as a target grade level, however this curriculum could easily be adapted for both older and younger students: 5th-12th grade.

An optional feature in this challenge experience is to have students submit their design briefs (anonymously from their teacher) for the opportunity to be recognized by Construct and Industry Leaders interested in their concepts!

A teacher running this Transportation Design Challenge could connect it to multiple standards at multiple grade-levels in multiple subject areas.

Construct has facilitated several cohort-based challenges for middle and high school students, using this toolkit, and we are excited to be able to provide this curriculum at no charge to any interested teachers.

We are happy to answer any questions - you can reach us at info@constructlearns.org. We also offer additional coaching support.

Please download this Challenge and share it with your colleagues! If you opt to run the Challenge in your classroom, we do hope you'll reach back and let us know how it worked for YOU! With your feedback, we'll keep iterating and improving and work to make this a user-friendly, joy-provoking, flexible, rigorous, effective, skills-building and FUN curriculum toolkit for you and your students.

In the Future of Electric Transportation Design Challenge - a soup-to-nuts curriculum toolkit from Construct - you'll ask young people to find new and novel ways to increase use & equitable access to electric vehicles. This comprehensive toolkit is intended for classroom teachers and other educators interested in running a multi-week or full-term design challenge with students.

The guide is written with 8th-9th graders as a target grade level, however this curriculum could easily be adapted for both older and younger students: 5th-12th grade. An optional feature in this challenge experience is to have students submit their design briefs (anonymously from their teacher) for the opportunity to be recognized by Construct and Industry Leaders interested in their concepts! A teacher running this Transportation Design Challenge could connect it to multiple standards at multiple grade-levels in multiple subject areas. Construct has facilitated several cohort-based challenges for middle and high school students, using this toolkit, and we are excited to be able to provide this curriculum at no charge to any interested teachers.

We are happy to answer any questions - you can reach us at info@constructlearns.org. We also offer additional coaching support. Please download this Challenge and share it with your colleagues! If you opt to run the Challenge in your classroom, we do hope you'll reach back and let us know how it worked for YOU! With your feedback, we'll keep iterating and improving and work to make this a user-friendly, joy-provoking, flexible, rigorous, effective, skills-building and FUN curriculum toolkit for you and your students.

In this course we will look at ways to change the narrative on school libraries from questioning the need for them or how to renovate the industrial era models of a single, shared resource environment to a learner-centered model.  We will work on how to move beyond traditional concepts, personal biases and even past current Learning Commons and Maker Spaces to creating learning environments where resources are ubiquitously accessible to students in virtual and physical formats.    We will look at the enormous complexity of this model in a K-12 school and why not exploring unique, alternative concepts may be hastening the elimination of school librarians.

In this course we will look at ways to change the narrative on school libraries from questioning the need for them or how to renovate the industrial era models of a single, shared resource environment to a learner-centered model.  We will work on how to move beyond traditional concepts, personal biases and even past current Learning Commons and Maker Spaces to creating learning environments where resources are ubiquitously accessible to students in virtual and physical formats.    We will look at the enormous complexity of this model in a K-12 school and why not exploring unique, alternative concepts may be hastening the elimination of school librarians.

Module 5 Planning for Humans, Users-based DesignUser based design is so logical and widely talked about today that it can be overlooked in designing alternative school library spaces.  It is ultimately what this course is about.  We have discussed current solutions to the issue of what a school library should be, such as a Learning Commons.  We have learned how to work around biases that can stifle creative, alternative solutions. We have looked at alternative tools to use when considering or planning space.  Students have diagramed the trajectories that need to be considered in new library space, have overlaid those considerations with improvisational and dimensional elements.   In this module we will bring all these pieces together and plan a space that will work in students' individual school settings at this point in time based on the needs of their users.  However, those needs will not be fixed. Thinking you can design a space today for an extended period of time can not be your goal.  Library space must have a multiplicity of trajectories.  You must design for current user needs. Provide tools to build their base knowledge while watching down the road for the next information explosion, the tools it will require and decide how it will impact user needs.  Leadership is really your goal.  Adapting the space that users need to be successful is merely a an ongoing task.  

Les modules du Défi des apps juridiques d’accès à la justice ont pour but d'amener les participants à réfléchir à de nouvelles façons d'utiliser la technologie pour améliorer l'accès à la justice et, en fin de compte, à concevoir un concept d'application juridique pour résoudre les problèmes d'accès à la justice.

L'ensemble des cinq modules est destiné à fonctionner comme un "mini-cours" pour les élèves du secondaire de l'Ontario. Chaque module contient des informations générales sur le sujet afin d'aider les instructeurs à préparer les leçons. Les informations générales contiennent des sources permettant aux instructeurs et aux élèves d'approfondir les sujets qui les intéressent. Les modules sont conçus de manière à pouvoir être utilisés dans un environnement d'apprentissage en personne ou virtuel.

Students practice human-centered design by imagining, designing and prototyping a product to improve classroom accessibility for the visually impaired. To begin, they wear low-vision simulation goggles (or blindfolds) and walk with canes to navigate through a classroom in order to experience what it feels like to be visually impaired. Student teams follow the steps of the engineering design process to formulate their ideas, draw them by hand and using free, online Tinkercad software, and then 3D-print (or construct with foam core board and hot glue) a 1:20-scale model of the classroom that includes the product idea and selected furniture items. Teams use a morphological chart and an evaluation matrix to quantitatively compare and evaluate possible design solutions, narrowing their ideas into one final solution to pursue. To conclude, teams make posters that summarize their projects.

Context, purpose and audience. There are two broad types of assumptions that designers must identify and address: the first type are assumptions they, as designers, have as they begin a project; the second type are assumptions that are ambient in the project context–assumptions that many of the project stakeholders either hold or frequently experience. In both cases, naming the assumption and developing an articulation for how that assumption can be reconsidered can help direct a project toward greater impact.

This lesson is designed to help participants reframe these two types of assumptions. It can be used with design students from high school to continuing (adult) education. It is best delivered towards the end of the initial phase of design research (“Empathize” phase, to use the parlance of Stanford), after students have conducted interviews and other forms of research.

The lesson offers five reframe patterns. These are meant to help students identify particularly powerful articulations of reframed assumptions by providing five different jumping-off points for ideation. The patterns are best introduced and used lightly: as provocations rather than as a formula to rigidly follow.

We illustrate these reframe patterns using examples from disability studies. Thus, this lesson also serves as a “trojan horse” to infuse core design justice concepts.

Prepare for a POSTDIGITAL world of OPPORTUNITY at this free community technology event.Interactive learning about our use of mobile devices and broadband technologies guides the design of a human-centered, digital technology infrastructure for Albany, NY during this community technology event. The Howe Branch Library kicks off the Tech-Com Albany Symposium as the host of the opening plenary session on design-thinking about data diets, WiFi hotspots, and user experience concerns on Friday, April 28, 2017 at 10AM.  Trinity Alliance CSCC, co-hosts the second day of the symposium with a half day of interactive workshops on inclusive thinking in STEM and career choice on Saturday, April 29th at 8:30AM. Pre-register today! Tech-Com Albany Plenary Session Data - Friday, April 28, 2017