Makerspaces in the Real World: Design Thinking and Prototyping (CS)

Participants will dive into the design thinking process, tackling a real-world problem through empathy, ideation, prototyping, and testing. They'll learn to facilitate collaborative problem-solving and rapid prototyping using a variety of materials and tools, emphasizing the iterative nature of design.
This session offers educators and librarians an introduction to Design Thinking and Prototyping within a Makerspace environment. Participants will engage with the full design thinking cycle—from understanding users and defining problems to ideating solutions, building prototypes, and testing outcomes. We will focus on hands-on learning and blending makerspaces and design thinking across various subjects and grade levels. We will use basic makerspaces tools and some fun ed tech tools combined to create several rapid prototypes to help solve real world problems and then test them out in class!