Skill Tags Idea: First Draft

The Big Idea:

Give teens and staff a tangible set of goals through fluency models. The tags will represent fluency models that live in a notebook, as posters on the studio walls, on laptop hard drives, on the DesignIT blog, and in the teens’ file. We would build incentives into the program based on the tags. For example, when a teen earns a dozen tags she would become eligible to win a cool tech gadget. Each cycle would give the teens who sign up for it a chance to earn a specific set of tags. The only requirement for earning a tag is that the teen produce a project that demonstrates her mastery of the skills and concepts on the tag. The teen can earn tags for projects built at any time during the DesignIT year.

One Approach:
Tags as large projects that build in specific skills. Each tag includes several model projects at different levels of sophistication and outlines the main features of each.

1. Sound automata, marble mazes (Projects that include wood-working, sensors and Cricket basics)


2. Singing water fountain (MIDI programming and sensor building)


3. “Pipey the Pipe Cleaner” or “Help We Shrunk Ourselves!” (Stop-motion animation and storyboarding)


4. The DesignIT blog (documentation and journal writing)


5. The Merry Christmas box (Basic circuits)


6. Dancing cars or “week in the park” display (IR communication)

Another Approach:

lots of specific skill-based tags
Power tools
Woodworking
Logoblocks programming
MIDI programming
Scratch animation
Sensor building
Basic circuits
Word processing
Blogging and journaling
Sketching
Electronics