Learning by design – LEGO Challenge at TekX

The quintessential experience of pouring out a bucket of plastic bricks onto the floor, sifting and searching through all the random blocks and parts to find just the right piece for that house or skyscraper or space station – that is the classic memory many adults have of playing with LEGO. For as much as our childhood memories might be filled with playing and building with LEGO, the world’s largest toy company created something far more sophisticated than a simple toy. They built a system for creative play.  As a tool for design, LEGO offers some extremely satisfying and rewarding possibilities, especially in the classroom. For teachers looking to stimulate their students creativity through design based learning activities, LEGO is the perfect solution. Taking some initial inspiration from the design based learning methodology, our LEGO Challenge learning activities here at TekX are focused on sparking students creativity. The goal is get students to think creatively about specific, reality based problems for which they need to design solutions. Whether one is imagining innovative ways to build structures or vehicles or altogether new technologies, the LEGO system can be an excellent tool  for any design process. However, in contrast to the classic bucket of LEGO on the living room floor, at TekX we have a collection of bricks that are sorted by color, size and type.  This system makes it much easier for students to focus on finding the best solutions to solve a problem, rather than spending their precious time trying to find pieces.