Achieving Teacher-Free Child-Led Design and Additive Manufacturing Using the Sense

Abstract

The ability of a child to be creative in school is often impeded by the fact that an adult is always present and exerts a significant amount of influence over the child. This paper proposes an approach to design that will reduce adult influence and allow children to take more ownership of the design process. Specifically, children are given the Sense, a hand-held 3D scanning device which allows children to scan an object and then upload the image to a 3d printer, The benefits of this include that it will lead to the development of artefacts that are not influenced by adults and will allow children to more enterprising with their designs. This has significant implications for the development of curricula in art and design subjects as well as the pedagogical approaches of teachers. This study investigates the possibility of this approach and considers pedagogical approaches. The methodology included the development and experimentation of the approach to independent design and creativity and a post-experiment focus group to reveal the children's experience.The results revealed that the children clearly acknowledged the absence of a 619Synnyt / Origins | 2 / 2019 | Non-peer reviewed | Full paper teacher and that this had a positive effect on their design, moreover, the children appreciated the fact that they were given the opportunity to design alone and have control over the design process. From a practical perspective, children found using the Sense to be easy and they did not require help from teachers. Overall the approach to design proposed in this study allowed children to be more enterprising in design if teachers only took a minimum facilitatory approach.