Together with the Design Thinking Team from the Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI), principal and teachers from primary school, professional trainers that hold ample teaching experiences with theatre, child counselling and psychology, director, representative from Playright Children's Play Association, PMQ Seed has hosted and completed the “KIDS CONNECT Train The Trainer Workshop” in May and June 2023. Offered to designers and creative professionals participating in this year’s educational programmes, as well as primary school teachers involved in the “KIDS CONNECT School Outreach”, the workshop provided training on applied design thinking, children’s participation, children’s psychology, and more. Participants were encouraged to make use of the relevant knowledge in their creative educational efforts. The training team will continue to offer professional advice for PMQ Seed’s educational programmes throughout the year.
Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that champions creativity and human-centeredness. As the world becomes driven by constantly evolving technology, it is more important than ever for young learners to develop soft skills in areas such as empathy, communication, listening, and collaboration. With this in mind, how might primary school educators make use of design thinking and Learning by Doing in ways that can challenge students to tackle complex problems?
For this sharing session, we were honored to have expert lecturer Edwin Wong from Hong Kong Design Institute explain the basics of design thinking, as well as theatre education consultant Ms Sim Fong Zoe Lai from our PMQ trainer team and primary school Assistant Principal Jade Lee, who shared with us their previous experiences bringing design thinking into primary schools and discussed future possibilities for cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Presenters:
Mr Edwin Wong (Lecturer, HKDI)
Ms Sim Fong Zoe Lai (Theatre artist, co-founder of Littleurbanmountain Design)
Ms Jade Lee (Assistant Principal of Hong Kong University Alumni Association (H.K.) Primary School)
In order to provide our trainers and teacher participants with a solid understanding of the program’s core methodology, we invited Hong Kong Design Institute’s Design Thinking Team to deliver two workshops on basic and advanced design thinking skills. Participants in both were guided to complete a group design project. The basic level workshop offered an introduction to design thinking concepts, user research methodology, and roleplaying as a user experience research tool. In the second session, participants learned to use a variety of tools for data analysis and ideation, through which they experienced the complementary modes of divergent and convergent thinking. Finally, each group generated a design solution that met the client’s needs and project criteria, and presented it via visual sketches.
For the advanced level workshop, Edwin provided a deeper look into the theory and applications of design thinking, including its role in experiential learning, outcome-based education, and learner assessment in creative education. Special guests Principal Cheng Ka Po of C.C.C. Mong Wong Far Yok Memorial Primary School and the school’s teaching team shared insights from their story of success in developing design thinking as part of the curriculum, as well as how they created program frameworks that struck a balance between ‘fun’ and ‘learning’, responding to both students’ unique needs and the school’s pedagogical goals.
Hong Kong Design Institute - Design Thinking Team
The Hong Kong Design Institute’s Design Thinking Team was founded in 2017, and is focused on developing design thinking partnership and training programmes. The team consists of higher education professionals with extensive experience in the field of design, who are passionate about facilitating the education and application of design thinking in tertiary, secondary, and primary schools, as well as the design industry.
The trainer Ms. Zoe Lai specialises in applying theatre techniques to educational activities designed for primary level learners. Participants in this workshop were able to understand their own voice and movement habits, explore a variety of vocal, facial, and gestural expression skills, and build public speaking confidence through theatre exercises. Participants learned to use relevant techniques to create more effective and engaging classes for young learners.
With a Master of Arts in Theatre Practice from the University of Exeter, Ms Lai is an independent theatre consultant with expertise in drama and modern dance performance. She was involved in plays and projects such as “Red”, “Attempts on her Life” (HKREP), “Testimony” (Rooftop Productions), “Remote Hong Kong” (Tai Kwun), Documentary Theatre (Pants Theatre Production), “100% Hong Kong” (West Kowloon District) and the Hong Kong International Black Box Festival. Ms Lai has also won a Good Design Award from Japan in 2020 for her public education initiative “An Edible Performance” curated for Tai Kwun, Hong Kong.
The trainer Mr. Alex Yiu began by guiding participants to decode personal communication habits. Drawing from his own extensive clinical experience, he also gave an overview of children’s ways of expressing emotion and personality, and shared recommendations on how to prepare for group activities and respond to group dynamic issues with counseling microskills. Participants learned essential tools for understanding their students’ needs on a deeper level.
Mr. Alex Yiu, a practicing Counselling Psychologist in Hong Kong, encouraged participants to explore their daily communication habit, together with his rich clinical experience, theory and examples, he
brought out the issues from children in the communication process through different cases. He also shared how mentors would do better preparation before group activities, analyze the emotions reflected by the children in the communication process, and how to deal with the situation of different students in the classroom.
Equipped with extensive video production and training experience, trainer Mr. Dawn Cheng delivered a crash course on creating short videos with primary level learners, covering skills for storytelling, videography, editing, equipment operation, and more. Participants explored visual narrative techniques through working on practice projects.
Dawn is a director with more than 20 years of experience in film and television production. His shooting experience includes TV commercials, company promotional videos, documentaries, etc. Major clients include museums, universities, TVB, HK Electric, Hutchison Telecom, Dior Hong Kong and other listed companies. Dawn also works as an instructor in the Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI), teaching certificate courses such as film production, film special visual effects etc. In recent years, he has also held mobile short film shooting workshops to share mobile phone shooting and editing skills.
What is Child Participation? For that matter, what is Public Participation? We were excited to have Ernest Poon from Playright Children's Play Association share with us a series of case studies on the topic, as well as insights on the timing, roles, and scopes involved. Each group of participants discussed lessons learned from past activity planning experiences and consider ways to put the concept of Child Participation in practice.
Ernst Poon | Assistant Manager, Play Environment, Playright Children's Play Association
Playright Children’s Play Association (Playright) is a charity founded by Mrs Marden and other co-founders in 1987 in Hong Kong. Rooted in Hong Kong for several decades, Playright has all along pursued the mission of advocating children’s play.
