And "thinking made visual" is also good education.
So when Otago Polytechnic product design students Madeline King and Cameron Malendoski recently visited St Leonards School and found some pupils having difficulty with mathematics — particularly fractions and percentages — they knew exactly how to help.
The duo came up with a set of blocks of varying sizes, similar to Cuisenaire rods, made out of laser-cut MDF, with coloured stickers on them to show different values and sizes, like 50%, ½, 0.5 and 33%, ⅓, 0.33 — all of which fit together to make 100%.
It was an interactive, hands-on way to show scale and decimals and fractions in a tactile way, Miss King said.
"So you’ve got a whole, you’ve got your halves, so you can see physically how two halves fits into one whole and vice versa, and it goes up the scale."
On Thursday, they introduced the new product design to the pupils, who found it very helpful.
"It has created a more visual aid for the children to learn about fractions and percentages," she said.
"There are te reo colours there as well and te reo numbers, just to kind of keep that integrated.
"So the idea is that it can be used for maths and equations, colours and spelling, and it’s just a physical tool to represent fractions into decimals."
It was hoped the product would be available to schools around the country by the end of this year and was one of many teaching resources being designed by students in the product design course, she said.
The second-year product design students have been designing hands-on kits, aimed at providing Dunedin primary school teachers with new educational tools to promote interest in science and maths.
The custom kits encourage children to explore big ideas like gravity, inertia and kinetic energy through physical experiments, rather than just theoretical lessons.
Senior lecturer Andrew Wallace said the goal was to make learning science and mathematics more exciting and memorable for pupils.
Feedback from local teachers suggested that while digital learning had grown in recent years, there was still a shortage of tangible classroom resources, he said.
"What’s missing is new ways for children to explore the physical world — forces, energy, motion — in ways that feel fresh and hands-on."
He believed the initiative highlighted how design thinking could address big issues in education, at a time when New Zealand schools were under pressure to lift achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
"Product design is uniquely placed to lead these conversations.
"By linking tertiary education with primary school classrooms, our students are not only preparing for their own careers but also helping shape the future of science and technology learning across the country."
