During my recent trip to India, I visited the American Embassy School (AES) in New Delhi. During my visit, I was able to talk to the members of the technology integration team and how they are combining design thinking, computational thinking, and maker space ideas to allow students to become creative users of computing technologies. More on AES tech vision can be read here. While computational thinking in K-12 schools has gotten a lot of attention, design thinking has the potential to further enhance students’ creative problem solving.

The Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford University offers a virtual crash course that exposes learners to the five aspects of design thinking: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Teachers interested in learning more about how to embed design thinking in their K-12 classroom can find more resources on the d.school’s K12 lab network wiki.