My caption aptly captures the feeling that I have after being one of the facilitator for the Design & Technology Forum yesterday @ SAS. It somehow captures the essence of what I personally feel, that is, in our, or rather, my search to find the true essence of what d&t education is all about. I guess it is all about 'engaging', rather than 'educating' (borrowed terms from the guest speaker! ;)) the students, to open up their minds, to enable them to 'see' things, to be able to appreciate, and henceforth be able to apply their learning. So smitten am I on the caption that I think I would like to use it as my department's mantra, as part of my vision towards a 'department of excellence'.
But really, I did mention about the fact that though there was a resurgence of sorts towards a more design-biased approach in the subject matter, there are indeed some issues that we, d&t educators, do grapple with. I guess one point that still bugs me is the consistent and constant voices by others on the need to have some form of a 'structured' approach to design activities, and about some form of a 'regular, standardised guideline' on the subject area and its eventual evaluation and assessment criterion. But then again, isn't this whole episode of 'convergently divergent' wonderful? I don't really feel that there is this dire need to 'standardise', nor a need to have only one 'straight-jacketed' approach towards the teaching of d&t...in fact it is THIS whole multitude of approaches that I think will add to the richness of our teaching and engaging experiences, and it is THIS very 'flexibility' that will give our subject area its particular uniqueness! Hmmm.....
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