Spanish Teacher Bibi Millet charged her students with creating a presentation on a Spanish-speaking country “in a way that has never been done before.” The emphasis in this project, from a Design Thinking perspective, was on the Research/Deep Dive and the Generate Ideas stages. Students did on-line research both in the I-Lab and as homework. Armed with this information, they worked to brainstorm novel ways in which they could present their research and the fun facts that they had learned (Research).

We had each student write or draw ten adjectives or images on sticky notes that represented the essence of the fun fact that they had identified during their research (Generating Ideas). (Note: Drawing is encouraged throughout the Design Thinking process. In fact, one of the Brainstorming Rules is “Be Visual.”)

Then we had them generate another ten images or ideas from those adjectives. Now they had 20 words, phrases, or images, and we began to brainstorm ideas for each student as a group. The students began to see how they could break out of a normal report mode, and there was lots of laughter as they combined ideas and built upon each others’ ideas (Brainstorming).

At the final presentations, fellow classmates learned about the Spanish-speaking countries of the world, as they were treated to a puppet reenactment of famous battles, served three authentic dishes from the Dominican Republic from a student-designed baseball stand decorated in t-shirts, flags, and signs, and learned about Ecuador by reading want ads and flyers that were posted on a giant kiosk. (Share).