On our first round of play testing, we mainly focused on testing out the “designing your postcard” learning activity.
We were especially interested to seek out answers on the following questions:
- Timing of activity - will 45 minutes be enough time to design cyanotypes postcards?
- Feasibility - how many learners will we be able to fit into one lesson? Will there be enough time for everyone to design and produce their own cyanotypes? Currently, we designed the activity with the assumption that there will be around eight students in the classroom.
- What would be the most meaningful way to “anchor” the lesson? A lesson in chemistry will be a given, as cyanotypes are inherently about chemical reaction. But what do we ground the lesson on? Would it be more of an “artistic, self expression” approach or should it be about public health i.e. wearing sunscreens?
- How deep should we dive into the details of chemical reactions behind cyanotypes?
In total, we tested the learning activity on four groups of testers - the people that we tested on consists of teachers from Allergic to Salad and our peers in the tangibles class. Below are some of the key insights and observations that we found:
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🔎 Link to the notes document that we used in our play testing here.
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It’s definitely necessary to flesh out a simple explanation to the chemistry behind cyanotypes.
At a high level, we should try to explain:
- Why the paper is photosensitive
- The idea of blocking UV light on the prints - we could try to ground this in discussions about sunscreen blocking sunlight, which they will most likely already be familiar with.
- Why the colors flip after rinsing
We don’t need to get into too much details on the chemistry - focus on key concepts such as wavelengths and spectrum.
- Should definitely cover visible light, but don’t need to go into the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum in tons of detail