Article by Justin Bernard 

At the end of the 2024 School year, the San Diego Unified School District and the Career Technical Educators program hosted their annual two-week PBL-Institute for educators interested in bringing project-based learning concepts and methods into their classrooms. Over 80 educators attended, including admin, department heads, and teachers. As part of the Institute, NuVuX was invited to host a day-and-a-half workshop to introduce educators to NuVu's design studio pedagogy and creative process that schools around the world use. These open-minded educators got to be students for the day by going through a design charrette - "Throne for Two" - exploring the entire design process in a sprint-like challenge, including brainstorming, design development, prototyping, and presenting their work to their peers! As you can imagine, the TEACHERS DID AWESOME! Although this was not a requirement, they even incorporated AI-generated images into their work! Educators incorporated their interests into their concepts and were generous and kind in giving feedback and critique to their peers.

After the Design Sprint, teachers participated in select breakout sessions. NuVuX led a breakout session on more specific ways to incorporate NuVuX's design studio curriculum and process into their classrooms and content areas with the assistance and use of the NuVuX platform. In addition to our existing SDUSD cohort of teachers, a new cohort of CTE Teachers at Logan Memorial High School in the Logan Heights neighborhood will lead NuVuX studios for the second year this fall! 

We look forward to collaborating with SDUSD's educators this year and working alongside their students to create innovative and creative solutions to design challenges! 

We can't wait until next year's PBL Institute. A big thanks to Thomas Antl and Christopher Millow for the invitation and for facilitating an enriching Institute!

A group of 80 educators is excited to participate the week after the end of the school year! Teams share their design concepts and receive feedback from their peers.

Participants develop small-scale concept models using lo-fi prototyping materials. There were a lot of really excellent concept and diagram sketches! 

Participants took to the stage to present their final prototypes to their peers. One team rendered their sketch using AI-generated imagery.