Two years ago, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum closed for renovations and the opportunity opened up to explore a school-based program: Design in the Classroom. This free 45-minute, single visit workshop introduces K-12 students to design thinking. In short, design thinking is a term describing the way designers critically assess the "things" all around us....
Cooper-Hewitt's Education team spent an amazing week in New Orleans with 26 educators from New York City, San Antonio, New Orleans and Washington, D.C. Although their day jobs include teaching subjects from across the curriculum, including math and science as well as social studies and history, they all became designers for the week and solved...
Can you explain a little bit about the type of work you do here at Cooper-Hewitt? I work in the Education Department as the Public Education Manager, which means that I develop and plan programs and activities that engage the public with the Museum, its collection, and with design in general. These include hands-on design...
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in collaboration with the GreenLab committee of NEST+m, will host an Innovative Educational Design Expo to be held in conjunction with the NYC x Design Week festivities. An open house from 5:00-6:15 will allow guests to view posters and meet representatives from different groups doing exciting and ground-breaking work creating stimulating...
From cutting-edge karaoke to interactive chair mazes, students envision museum exhibitions of the future. On February 13, DesignPrep students met for their final of four sessions with Angela Chen and Erika Tarte, professional interaction and graphic designers from the firm Local Projects, to present their ideas developed over the prior three weeks. Inspired by works...
The Cooper-Hewitt DesignPrep program (one of 30 winners of the Digital Media and Learning Competition ) is supporting lifelong learning through the integration of digital badges. The goal of this effort is to construct a digital record of students’ extracurricular learning and providing recognition for the technical and conceptual skills students gain through their involvement...
Interaction design is not just about the way an individual interacts with his or her surroundings, it is about bringing people together and starting conversations. On February 4th at Cooper-Hewitt’s uptown Design Center, this was the theme for our group of Design Scholars’ most recent workshop. We held our first meeting with a few user...
Can you explain a little bit about the type of work you do here at Cooper-Hewitt? I manage the K-12 school programs and all tours for the museum. I supervise both the Design Educators, who provide our school audiences with tours and workshops, and the Docents, who provide our public and private tours. In addition,...
Access to clean drinking water, sustainable energy sources and changes in the environment are some of the challenges faced by many around the world. Designers, from the Australia to Bangladesh, are responding with innovative design solutions. The Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies organizes a free online conference series on pressing environmental issues. This...
