This activity was used with post-16 students in years 12 and 13.

Context

This project was a collaboration between students at a technology college in the United Kingdom and their counterparts in a school on the Navaho reservation in Arizona in the United States. The students exchanged ideas about designing and manufacturing products, using audio (and video) conferencing as well as faxes and the internet.

Aim

• To share and value the artistic expression and design of a different culture.

Activity objectives

• To carry out joint design-and-make projects in collaboration with students at a US school.
• To develop an accurate, mutual understanding of the life and culture of two communities in different countries.
• To use online technologies such as CAD/CAM and video-conferencing to create techniques and procedures for design and technology work.

Activity description

This project started with a pilot team of students who applied to be part of the group. Once selected, the students started to audio-conference in 1997, exchanging information with Navaho high school students in Arizona about their lives: for example where they lived, their interests, hobbies, school life, families, homes and local cultures.

The students collaborated by organising and holding regular online meetings and sending faxes and emails. Once the students had got to know each other, they embarked on a team project to design and make Navaho 'spiritware' (in this case, a wooden product with the Navaho good luck symbol of a mustang horse as the theme).

They exchanged ideas about culture, as well as stories, poems and images. They used video-conferencing and computer-aided design (CAD) to exchange their design ideas and to discuss development work on screen. They used computer-aided manufacture (CAM) to make a simulation of the product. The UK students drew several designs and sent them to the US students for review. Revisions and final designs were agreed between the two groups of students and the UK students produced final designs.