Lesson video

Hello, I am Mrs Enock and I'm so happy to be your designing technology teacher today.

We're focusing on mechanisms with levers and linkages.

Now today's lesson we're going to be developing our design ideas even further using our understanding of mechanisms that we've learned so far.

Let's go and see what we're going to learn about in today's lesson.

In this lesson, you will need a pencil, rubber and ruler, cardboard which can be recycled boxes, scissors, and split pins.

And I also like to use a piece of blue tack or you could have some Play-Doh or plasticy or a small sponge, just something that when we are making holes through the paper we can push a pencil into without damaging the table.

Now, please remember scissors must be used under the supervisors, a parent or carer.

We're going to start by recapping on design criteria.

We'll then recap on levers and linkages and developing our ideas.

We'll then finish by making a prototype of that moving picture.

Okay, let's look at the key words in today's lesson.

These are the words that are really important for us to use and understand, so ready to repeat after me.

Great, mechanism.

You go, excellent mechanism.

A device used to create movement in a product and that's what we're working on.

Mechanisms, lever, lever is a rigid bar which moves around a pivot in our lesson were using cardboard as a lever linkages, you say it, super linkages are card strips, joining one or more levers to produce the required type of movement.

We are joining those card strips to make more than one lever.

Design brief, Your turn, design brief is a description of a product that will be designed so, our design brief is about and moving picture.

It States how a product will function to meet the needs of the user.

How is it going to work? Prototype, you say it, super prototype is an early sample or model of a product and we build it to test the concept or process.

So today, we're building our prototype to test the mechanisms. Got it.

Great, our last word sketch you go, sketch is a rough drawing of the product.

Today, we'll be sketching onto ideas.

It's not the final drawing.

It's just a way to get our ideas onto the paper so we can start to explore and experiment without ideas.

Now we've covered key words.

It's time to recap on our design criteria.

Here's our design brief.

It was to design a persuasive picture with moving components.

And that criteria, the picture had to include, it must be moving.

It had to be controlled.

It had to be appealing and it had to be persuasive.

So these are the things that we must include when we design our product, of the persuasive picture.

Let's recap on appealing design techniques, we want our designs to use bright colours, clear pictures a bold title and a clear theme, to help the people looking at our picture understand the message we're trying to convey.

Let's recap on our persuasive design techniques.

We want to use strong adjectives, populous.

Its is a more powerful word than nice.

We want to play on people's emotions.

We want people to either feel really happy when we, they think about our products or maybe feeling a little bit guilty which might inspire them to make better decisions.

We want to give them a reason to agree with what we're persuading them to do.

We want to help people feel good, about doing what we want them to do.

We also want an impressive title or heading, we want it very clear, so people understand exactly the message we're trying to convey.

Okay, let's recap on levers and linkages.

Here our example of some of the ways that we combined cardboard as levers and split pins as a pivot.

we were able to cross over the two levers to make a cross and then attach them, to make a long working mechanism.

Here's also an example of different mechanisms that you might want to use in your persuasive picture.

Here we have a lever that's causing an oscillating movement.

Here, we have an input that sliding that causes an output sliding in a different direction.

This mechanism has one input sliding the orange bar and an outcome of two oscillating movements.

I will look at this mechanism.

The lever is the input.

It's giving a slide emotion and you get the output of two moving mechanisms. Okay, it's now time to develop our own ideas, now, remember your ideas should look different to mine, because everybody is different and you want to work on your ideas, ready? Let's go and see, okay, let's have a quick recap on what you want to persuade people to do.

Remember, it doesn't have to be the same as mine.

Press pause and have a little think now, look in my idea.

And then once you finally decided, press resume and we will carry on learning together, ready, off you go.

Have you got your idea? Fantastic.

Here was my idea, remember, we don't have to have the same ideas.

I wanted to think of a way, to persuade people to help our planet.

So I did a little brainstorm of lots of different ideas good ideas for you to pause the video and just say out loud the things you thought of, to help persuade people to do what you want to focus on ready? off you go.

Did you come up with a brainstorm? Well, if you did, Okay, we are now going to start exploring the techniques, so once I had an idea, i wanted to sketch out some of my ideas and I decided to explore, helping our planet, by focusing on sea creatures and how we can reduce plastic to help them.

So, I've had a go, drawing an animal, and if I find a picture more tricky, I then find a picture that I can trace over to, to develop.

Can you see what I'm tracing? Have you worked out yet? I'm adding the details off.

It's a sea horse.

It was very useful to use pictures to help me develop my design.

I can always change it and make it my own afterwards.

Here is another way I explored my ideas, I drew down some of my ideas.

I used other pictures to help me trace.

And actually I enjoyed up-cycling old pictures by cutting out pictures that I thought were interesting.

Now I'm adding them to my collection.

By doing this, I can start to explore what sea creatures I'd like to use in my final design.

I can start with an inspiration from another source and then turn it into the ideas for myself.

Here's an overview of the different techniques that I tried, i liked my fish and sea creatures that are sad.

It's more persuasive.

Okay.

It's now time for you to pause the video and complete your task.

You're going to develop your ideas for your persuasive picture.

You can sketch different ideas.

You can trace or cut out pictures that inspire you.

Remember, follow your own ideas and you can change pictures that you see to make them your own.

Once you've done this press, press resume and we'll carry on learning together.

Ready, off you go.

Well done for exploring your ideas.

It's now time for us to get practical and start to make a prototype.

Do you remember what a prototype is? A prototype is a rough model, replicating, copying thought the final design will be.

I find prototypes so useful because they give me opportunity to experiment and explore the way that the mechanism will work.

It doesn't mean, the first idea I try out, will be my final design.

That's why I think prototypes are so useful.

Let's go and explore.

Here is our safety warning, you're going to be asked to use a sharp scissors for the next activity.

Please just go and check that an adult is present before you start this activity, please don't use sharp scissors, unsupervised.

Okay, press pause and get your equipment and your adult ready now.

And I will see you soon.

All ready? Fantastic.

Now before we start the prototype, I really want to talk to you about experimenting with the design.

It's so important that in design and technology that you're not afraid to make mistakes.

The whole idea, is we are designing something and being brave enough to develop it and change it, and it might make it even better.

Here are ways that you can experiment with your design.

You can change the length of the card that we use for the levers.

See what happens when you do this? Does it change the range of movement? Does it have a different effect? Also have a look and change the position of your pivot.

Try placing your paper fasteners in different places.

What happens when you do that? Does it make the mechanism better or worse? You can also change the length of your slider.

You can cut different size slit into your card and explore how this might affect the movement.

And finally, you can try adding a bridge to your mechanism and see what happens and how your movement is when the bridge is there and when the bridge is not there.

Okay, here is an example of me trying a first prototype.

As you can see my movements, not very strong.

I feel that I didn't cut you out as well.

And possibly my card was too thick.

So I then decided to try and use a thinner card because I thought this might be able to make the cuts easier into it.

I've got my first lever and I can play around with where I want it on the page.

I know that I want a sea creature to be swimming at the top of my picture.

I'm just not quite sure, where I'm going to position it.

Once I have decided and experimented, I can then add my blue tack and begin to make a hole so I can make my loose pivot.

Pop the back open, and I've got my first mechanism.

Now I need to do a fixed pivot.

Remember we can experiment where to put that fixed pivot I find using my finger is a great way to experiment.

Uh! how the movements different? Once you decided on where your pivot can be? It's then ready to actually put this split pin in so we can make the hole, and add the split pin.

And there you have the first movement, you can see I've got the fixed pivot and this split pivot.

Hmm, I feel maybe I'm missing something.

I now wanted to experiment with the slider, i want to see exactly where, my mechanism will be moving.

So I'm actually moving my mechanism and just making a little pencil mark roughly of where the mechanism is moving.

And what I wanted to do, was to experiment and see what the range of movement was.

So I'm marking it out, checking both directions and just taking the time to mark out.

Can you see that lovely arc? It's so useful to see where the mechanism is moving.

I've actually made this a little bit further.

Now we've done this.

I can actually cut that slit out and hopefully my lever will be able to go through this slit.

I would now like to add a bridge.

Yes, experimenting with a bridge for me really control the movement.

I wonder what would happen if I put the bridge in different places.

Now I've attached the bridge.

I've got the controlled movement of my levers.

Now I've cut out the slit.

Hmm, it looks the movement still, but there's something that's not quite right.

What is it? Ah.

My lever, isn't tall enough to go through this slit, back to the drawing board.

I'm now going to make this lever longer then I can put it through this slit and I have enough room to put the sea creature on top.

Now I can see that the sea creature is moving.

Oh, let's adjust that picture to make sure there we go, good to experiment.

So now there is a range of movement and the mechanism is behind the picture.

Pretty neater.

Now I'm going to start on my next mechanism.

It's quite important to experiment, when you have more than one mechanism on a page, where is the best place for the mechanism to be? So the sea creatures can move but it doesn't affect the other mechanism.

So how to play around and see what works for you.

Once you've decided then you can start to add your loose levers.

I'm making a loose lever here and a loose lever over that.

I wonder what would happen if I change the distance between them, do you notice I've used my fingers to experiment.

It's good to change the position to see what the movement is, checking that it doesn't get in the way of the other mechanism and I've still got the movement that I want.

Yes, once I've decided on the right position then I'm ready to make the pins fixed.

There's my fixed pivots.

Cause it is attached to the back of the card.

I've got two loose pivots and two fixed pivots.

And look at that, I've got one input and two outputs.

Brilliant.

Here was another technique i tried to find out the movement.

I liked this one.

What I did, is I put a hole in the lever and then I drew, where the movement would be the arc.

So you can see what the movement is ready to cut out.

None of being cut out, this time i learned to make my lever a little bit longer and this way yeah, check that there's movement could always make those slits bigger.

Then on the other side we've still got the mechanism at the top and now we've got two moving levers at the bottom.

I can pop the picture and then cut off the extra part of the cardboard.

Yes i have to make sure it's not attached to the back.

Otherwise the mechanism wouldn't be able to move.

It was really fun experimenting and trying different ways.

Yes, that's a great movement.

I was pleased with my prototype.

Now, i wonder how I'm going to make it look more attractive.

Good to check the mechanisms on the back, that they're both moving.

What do you think, if I can make even more changes? Okay.

Now it's your turn to pause the video to complete your task.

It's time for you to develop your ideas for the moving parts.

You can use recycle card to experiment and try out different moving techniques.

By the end of your experimenting, you would have built a prototype of what your final product could be.

Remember, experiment do not be afraid to make mistakes and have fun trying out new things.

Once you have built your prototype press resume and we'll carry on learning together, ready? Off you go.

Did you make your prototype? Well done if you did, here's a photograph of the prototype that I started to make as you can see, it's not the finished design pretty really useful for me to see how my mechanism will work and what adaptations I had to make, to make it even better.

Okay, here's a really important question to ask you and be honest with yourself okay.

Did you experiment and make changes with your design? Point either yes if you did, or no if you did not Well done, if you did experiment and make changes with your design being a good designer means not being afraid to go back to the drawing board and work to improve your product.

It's how we learn by making mistakes.

Lets see what we learned in today's lesson.

We recapped some design criteria.

We looked at our levers and linkages and we worked on developing our ideas, using techniques like sketching, tracing and cutting out pitches for inspiration.

We then became great designers and we experimented and played around with our mechanisms, finally making a prototype.

I had so much fun working with you today.

You should be really proud of all the work that you have done and I hope to see you soon.

Bye for now.