By Pat Hough, Middle School Design Teacher and Technology Integration Director

During the first semester, the 8th Grade students started a unit on three-dimensional design. The project required students to design chairs, first using two and three-dimensional drawing skills, and later transferring their ideas into a three dimensional modeling program called “SketchUp”. Their final assessment for the unit was the finished 3D chair.

We began by doing some research on the history of chairs. It was fascinating to see that as art and architecture evolved over time, chair design did too. But their purpose never has; for millennia people have needed a place to sit. As such, the chair is a perfect marker for the ever-changing history of design.

The students continued their exploration by searching for images of many different types of chairs. After researching, they made sketches of four separate chair designs using paper and pencil.

After doing pencil sketches, each student completed a self-directed tutorial on SketchUp. They then used their new technology skills to transfer their sketched designs into SketchUp models. This digital model became the first summative assessment for the unit.