DICE At Blind Brook
Why DICE instead of STEAM?
The acronym DICE, stands for Design, Innovation, Creation, and Expression. We believe this approach to technology education better suits our vision of a graduate at Blind Brook. DICE focuses on what we want students to be and the skills we want them to develop, and is far more than just a collection of disciplines (ie STEAM).
Credit former Board of Education Member Ashley Welde for coining the acronym 'DICE', and the DICE (formerly STEAM) Committee for their hard work in helping to encourage the development of our DICE program and construction of the MS/HS Fab Lab and RSS Maker Space.
Ms. Welde sat down with us to discuss the origins of DICE, and explained that the acronym issue had gotten a little out of hand:
"First there was STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math]; then STEAM ['A' for the Arts]... there was even talk of moving to HAMSTER [Humanities, Art, Math, Science, Technology, Engineering and Reading/Research]. But these acronyms come and go. They are just adding disciplines. Education has become so siloed, and we were trying to find a way to bring these disciplinary silos together and integrate them. We realized that it's the skills that you need to focus on - Design can happen anywhere. Being innovative, creative, expressing oneself - it makes more sense to focus on the skills, behaviors and thought processes instead of a bunch of siloed academic areas."
Ms. Welde's hope for DICE for Blind Brook is that through the Fab Lab and Maker Spaces at our schools, but also through general curricular efforts, we will bring "incremental change and break down barriers between the silos. And hopefully teachers and students start coming to [these spaces] on their own," finding ways to Design, Innovate, Create or Express - just because they want to, or because it ties in to their classwork.
The Face(s) of DICE
Credit Tessa Bernard '23, Tudor Baltag '23, Jason Arnett '23, and Zac Rosenblatt '24 for creating the new DICE Logo that has been adopted here in the Fab Lab. As part of a Design Challenge in their Innovation + Design class, the students were asked to create a Logo and tagline that helped convey DICE principles to the community.
Their work was not completed in a day. Below are pictures from their design process from the beginning to the creative and unique logo you see on this site!
From their early development (left) to the fully realized DICE logo (above), the students worked hard to encapsulate the ideas of DICE, including "Forge The Future" - a great tagline if there ever was one - and...
The Fab-rarian - the face of our Fab Lab. They will become synonymous with the Fab Lab, and all the exciting things that go on here.
