For this project I think it involved a little less design thinking for the initial building/construction of the project. This is because, I had no clue what I was doing, so I had to look up a pre-designed origami design. But there was still a learning curve and process during the actual building off the piece where I had to experiment with the materials a little, ask what was going wrong when the folds weren’t working out, and build off from there. When I had to incorporate the light/batter/copper tape this involved the process of design thinking more so than the origami itself. I had no clue what to do with the copper tape and batter, or where I was going to put it. So I asked myself, how does this work? How would this look nice? I made design decisions to (try) to put a light in each petal. I was still experimenting with the copper and battery however, and figuring that out was hard and required me to ask for some help. Trying to figure this out, and ask what’s the problem? What is the solution? Helped me memorize how to do it properly in the future! From then on It was just a back and forth of building and testing it out (evaluating).

This exercise taught me a lot of basics! I never knew how to use simple circuits, so it was neat to figure that out and incorporating that into the origami. My learning process was all about experimentation, making mistakes, and then learning from those mistakes. It was also important for me to ask for help when I was stuck on something and knew I couldn’t figure it out on my own. This was especially true, as mentioned, with the copper tape and battery. With the origami, it was simply just to keep trying, I messed up my folds a lot, had to crumple up a few tries, but got the hang of it after a few tries. Once again, what was most challenging for me was incorporating the battery/light/copper tape, in a way I found aesthetically pleasing, and functional. This was definitely the most frustrating part, because there would be times where I think I have it designed perfectly, everything’s in the right place, but the light still won’t turn on. What was most fun was…finally seeing that light turn on! Having everything all coming together at the very end was a nice sight to see. I also enjoyed the making of the origami, even though I was just following some directions, it was a nice new experience.

This activity was totally new to my knowledge of art education. Of course I have heard of origami as a nice activity for elementary students, but adding the simple circuits adds a new level of design thinking complexity to the project. My knowledge of art education was expanded by this thought to include technology into art design projects. As mentioned before, origami is a project that I acquaint with an elementary student activity, and I think the addition of the simple circuits maybe just raises the level to a later elementary to middle school project, possibly even high school. In elementary and middle school I think I would give the students a chance to see if they could figure out how the circuits work, but if no one could find the solution I would demonstrate it for the class. For the origami aspect, it would be best to have instructions and choices of objects already laid out. I think for those who haven’t done origami before, creating your own would be very daunting. If I were to do this lesson I would also try to become more knowledgeable of origami so I could better demonstrate techniques.