SAIC Professor Advocates Design Education at WBEZ Event
On January 13 SAIC professor Linda Keane (Architecture) joined scholar Dr. Yong Zhao in a conversation moderated by WBEZ’s Alison Cuddy titled Reimagining School: Why Creativity and Innovation Matter. The event is part of a two part-symposium centered on the impact of creativity and innovation on students’ global competence. Keane and Zhao detailed the concept of product-oriented learning, a technique that uses the design process as an educational model. “Design is a wonderful process that not only engages creativity, but its counter point, critical thinking,” says Keane. “It is an incredible lens by which to look at the world and to creatively take in information, organize it, synthesize it, inspect it, and then begin to put it back together in order to produce things that make the world better. That's the whole goal.” Keane is a partner of Milwaukee’s STUDIO 1032 and co-founder and creative director of the eLearning ‘designopedia’, NEXT.cc. Some other recent education-focused initiatives from SAIC community members include a project taught by Elizabeth Orbán (BFA 2013) at Proviso Math and Science Academy, and SAIC grad students also joined nonprofit ScenariosUSA this fall to teach screenwriting curricula at 10 Chicago public schools.