H-PD Design Assignments 2010
As the SQA have recently returned the Higher Product Design design assignments from last session, I decided to get some of the best work up on the blog. The pupils design brief was to produce an 8 page design folio on seating or lighting for a modern railway platform. They have all followed a similar format whereby they complete two pages of concepts then evaluate and justify the best proposals. At this point the pupils develop their ideas paying careful consideration to aesthetic, ergonomic, manufacturing, material and other design issues. To finish off the pupils synthesise all their best work into a final solution and present a presentation image with a working drawing. The design assignment was worth 50% of their overall course grade with the other 50% taken from the written examination. The folios on display were all grade A's, scoring between 77% and 100%!
S4 C&D: Design Folios
This years S4 Craft & Design pupils are currently adding the finishing touches to their design folios. The pupils have each produced a folio of work which allowed them to identify a problem, analyse and research a solution, generate ideas, evaluate these against a specification, develop their idea into a final solution before producing a working drawing, cutting list and detailed sequence of operations. The department technician, Mr. Hickey, now has the cutting lists and we are hoping to start manufacturing their projects after the Christmas break. The class are now concentrating on theory revision in preparation for their prelim exam on Thursday 15th December. Remember that there is revision material on this blog in the "Courses Resources" section up above. Good luck folks!
S3 Design & Manufacture: Acrylic Clocks
As an alternative project to the S3 bathroom storage unit, Mr. Todd's class have completed an acrylic clock. This was inspired by a visit to Craigmount High School where pupil work was on display in the main foyer.
Pupils were encouraged to use simple shapes and think about the bending and forming that would be required to make a unique, interesting, functional product. During the folio stages lots of card modelling was completed to help the pupils understand and test their products prior to manufacturing.
EVALUATION QUESTIONS
1 What sections of the design folio did you do well?
2 What sections do you think you could improve?
3 What stages of the making did you enjoy?
4 What practical work do you think you could improve? (Edges??)
5 Did your product work out as you imagined?
6 If you were do doing the project again what would you change or improve?
3E Design & Manufacture – Plastics Project
October 2011 - Class 3E have nearly finished their 1st Design & Manufacture project of the year. The task was to design a prototype product in plastic suitable for use in a domestic bathroom. The brief was reasonably open ended so they were able to produce some creative designs for storing soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste.
EVALUATION QUESTIONS
1 What sections of the design folio did you do well?
2 What sections do you think you could improve?
3 What stages of the making did you enjoy?
4 What practical work do you think you could improve? (Edges??)
5 Did your product work out as you imagined?
6 If you were do doing the project again what would you change or improve?
2M1/2P3 Metal product design
2P3 returned to CDT from HE at the start of December on Rota 2. On completing their design folio they set about making the actual product. Some of their designs were very elegant. They worked with great enthusiasm cutting, shaping, annealing and soft soldering the parts. All models were finished on schedule to a good standard. Well done to all.
EVALUATION QUESTIONS
What sections of the design folio did you do well?
What sections do you think you could improve?
What stages of the making did you enjoy?
What practical work do you think you could improve?
Did your design work out as you imagined?
If you were do doing the project again what would you change or improve?
IET Faraday Challenge Day
St. Augustine's hosted one of the IET Faraday Challenge days on Tuesday 1st February 2011. The Institution of Engineering and Technology run these events to inspire young people about science, technology, engineering and maths (more details here: http://faraday.theiet.org/ ). Six pupils from 1C1 competed against teams from Balerno, Currie, Forrester, Leith & Trinity. The real world context was the development of remote controlled surgery (see: http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/16/robot-surgery-thy-name-is-davinci/ ). The challenge was to design and make a device that could be used to pick up and place two balls into two locations representing the heart and liver. An added twist was to operate the device via video screen! The teams were judged on several criteria including the design idea, the function of the device, cost effectiveness, team work & video presentation. The teams worked all day with great enthusiasm. The highlight of the day was final testing session. I think the teachers were more anxious than the pupils! The overall winning team was Currie. Our team came a creditable third. All agreed it was a great day and were looking forward to the event next year.
Downtime Apology
Apologies for the blog not being available for the last few days - in particular 1N2 who were trying to do their homework for Mr Kerr. I was experimenting with a server migration that was successful although we're back on the old server for now. Mr C
1N2 Art & CDT Graphics project
One aspect of 'Curriculum for Excellence' development is the increase in cross-curricular teaching. Some learning outcomes in Art and Graphic Communication provide a natural cross over. This year we were able to exploit the S1 Art/CDT rota to continue a graphics project across the two subject areas. Here is an example of the work produced by 1N2/1P7 who were in Art for Rota 1 until December then in the CDT Department from January.
1N2 Evaluation Questions
1 Did your poster meet the original specification?
2 Did other pupils think that your poster did what it was supposed to do?
3 Which part of the project did you find easy?
4 Which part did you find difficult?
5 If you were doing the project again what improvements would you make?