LEAD - Interaction

LEAD provides a learning context for reflection, discussion, and collaboration.

LEAD engages children in highly interactive process - in the positive-feedback loop of learning, presentation of creative ideas, collaborative teamwork with peers, intellectual partnership with teachers and facilitators, and communication with showcase audience.

Engagement in Positive-Feedback Loop of Learning

Design projects set up a positive-feedback loop of learning: when children design things, they get new ideas, leading them to design new things, from which they get even more ideas, leading them to design yet more things, and so on.

In this learning loop, children not only gain a deeper understanding of different knowledge, but also develop new ideas and ways of application in the world of knowledge.

Design projects encourage children to talk about their process of creative learning and ways of fixing problems in their inventive design. Digital technology used in LEAD empowers children with an added leverage: children are able to express themselves in new ways, through designing, storytelling, communicating, and inventing with technology.

In design projects, bugs and fixes in design become topics of conversation among children. Collaboration with peers comes in naturally as a result of children seeking help in their design work.

Design projects also urge children to put themselves in the minds of others, so as to know how others perceive their creative ideas and design. Reciprocal exchange of ideas thus becomes the norm of behaviour in the learning process.

LEAD views children as directors of their own learning. In LEAD, students do not reproduce a known experiment with known outcomes. Instead, they explore new ideas and exercise their creativity in their design - they bring up new project settings that neither students nor teachers have encountered before. LEAD design workshops in effect place both students and teachers in the role of investigators. LEAD thus provides a chance for both teachers and students to engage in intellectual collaboration, a situation in which the line between learners and teachers can fade.

Communication with Showcase Audience

As a public display of children's design projects, LEAD Showcase is a very important occasion to celebrate children's creative spirits. In the Showcase children take pride in communicating their inventive ideas and projects to a wider audience. They also get to know how others see their projects in different perspectives.