Professional Development and Olin College 12/8

Our department (Applied Art and Technology) does lots of hands-on Project Based and Design Thinking projects.  We have followed Buck Institute of Technolgy (BIE) and Design Thinking ideas generated by High Tech High in Napa California.  As part of our department PD this year we decided to visit a few schools.

We started with Olin College in Needham. A new kind of Engineering College, that believes "engineering is a creative enterprise that begins and ends with people and their desire for a better world" See what Olin students have to say about their school, video.

Even though classes were not in session, we were given a great tour by a group of students and witnessed many of the projects along with their passion for learning.  Twice a year students present their projects to the public. On Monday, December 18th there will be a presentation of student work.

As part of the tour we met with the administration to discuss how our course offerings aligned with several of the projects/programs at their college and ways to integrate some of our course with business and technology. 

Feedback from our department was very positive and we found the trip to Olin to be very beneficial!