Year 8 Product Design – Electronics Project
Topic: Product Design “Electronic light project”
Year Group: Year 8
Focus: 1. Core designing skills
2. Core manufacturing skills
3. Timber and Plastic Theory
What we will be learning
- Students will design and make a project that has a wooden base and a circular circuit board.
- They must use their imagination and design skills to take these elements and turn them into a high quality project of their choosing.
- Often students decide to make their project into a nightlight or a moodlamp, but not always.
- Students will learn how to use CAD (Computer Aided Design) and CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) to support the development and manufacture of their designs. Students will also build on their design skills from year 7 with a particular focus accurate model making and sketching skills
- Finally students will begin to learn how to be a more independent designer and be encouraged to take risks with their designs.
Why is this important? Where does this link to future/past learning?
- In year 7 students developed their core designing skills (sketching and basic model making) and manufacturing skills (hand tools and basic machine work such as the scroll saw). These activities were very much teacher led to build that core skillset. In year 8 students are asked to be more independent and apply that skillset to complete this project
- This builds independence and an environment of risk taking when it comes to designing.
- This is a key aspect of this subject as students will have to develop their independence and confidence in terms of designing in order to become creative problem solvers which is what this subject aims to do.
How will this topic be assessed? Formative and summative
- Formative assessment and feedback happens each lesson through teacher questioning and advice on work in progress and completed. Students also have broad targets in their sketchbook that act as a scaffold for them to reflect on their work and generate their own personalised action plan for improvement in their learning. These targets are linked to “DIRT” activities aimed at building independence and metacognitive skills within the students
- Summative assessment happens in three stages. Students manufacturing skills will be assessed through comparative judgement and rank order of projects which accounts for 40% of the overall mark.
- Students design skills will be assessed through comparative judgement and rank order of sketchbooks which accounts for 35% of overall mark
- Students theory knowledge will assessed through a theory “quest” which covers 25% of the overall mark
What make a strong piece of work in this topic, and what can I do to stretch myself in this topic?
- A strong piece of work is creative, unique and uses a variety of processes and techniques that have been carefully chosen to arrive at a solution that the student is proud of
- The student’s sketchbook displays a rich variety of creative potential solutions. It also clearly documents the design process and the mistakes they made and struggles they overcame on the way to arriving at that final solution
- In order to stretch themselves in this project students should practice their sketching skills (Product Design Maker Youtube channel is excellent to help with this) and also develop your CAD skills by practicing how to use Onshape and TinkerCAD.
