Design and Digital Technology

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Week 4 - Sustainability

How can Sustainability be Embedded in my Pedagogy? 

The design challenge that my partner and I have been looking at is revolved around technology and therefore does not fit in to many of the design life cycle stages - as shown below: 

Acaroglu, L. (2014) The good design guide. New York, USA: Eco Innovators. 

However just because this is a product of technology, does not mean that a positive attitude towards sustainability cannot be implemented within this subject to students.

Acaroglu, L. (2014) The good design guide. New York, USA: Eco Innovators. 

Opportunity to embed sustainable practice with the implementation of this design could be as simple as enforcing the switch off of powerpoints after lessons (Acaroglu, 2014). Completing a risk assessment in the design cycle of this product pointed out the idea of refraining from exposing children to long periods of working with a computer screen. This could be prevented AND sustainable practice be put in place by setting a timer on the particular game to avoid too much exposure to children. 

A problem that we came across is end of life stage for this product. The fast evolving technology in today's society puts the game at risk of becoming out of date and losing the interest of it's target audience (which is for all ages by the way, maybe above five years). This obviously can't be prevented but the life frame of it may be prolonged by giving it a futuristic element such as travelling out of space or simply play it safe - like we did. We looked at the long life Super Mario Brothers has had and how it is still well in the market and we created a game similar to this style. 

Overall, with this design we do not need to worry about economy -as it does not cost money to buy materials to create. Maybe use of the internet could become a disadvantage for some at home but this can be monitored through timers put in the game, as stated earlier. We addressed the importance of -------------> turning off powerpoints

----------->helping students put a timer on their game
-----------> turn down brightness
-----------> close down apps programs that are not in use
----------->disconnect and turn off printer

Some of these ideas were taken from
The Simple Dollar. (2014). 8 Energy saving tips. Retrieved from http://www.thesimpledollar.com/