Hello!

My name is Eric Saline, and I am the Design Technology teacher at Hvitfeldtska.

This is a very special, wonderful course that we offer, and it will help to prepare you for future careers, or fields of study in a wide range of specialties, including product design, graphic design, among others, and for those taking the course at HL, there's exciting opportunities to proceed with studies in engineering and architecture. Although many of you have perhaps not yet fully grasped what this course entails, I can recommend that you visit this website, https://sites.google.com/view/designandinquiry/2025-dp-dt?authuser=0&pli=1

to get some in-depth information of the SL/ HL Topics we will study together, along with some of the resources from MY "DT Summer Assignment" Google Site.

Learning this material will take us about a year and a half together, with many lessons, and account for most of your Final Grade for the course in the Spring of 2027. There's not yet a website for the additional HL materials, but if you are curious, I've attached a 4 page PDF that goes briefly over the whole course on my site, and you may have already received it in an email?

However, perhaps none of you would have chosen this course if it were just to learn a bunch of theoretical materials! Thankfully, the other %'s outlined in this document for your grade will be earned through your work on a year-long, hands-on Design Project, which we will formally begin next Winter. It's a daunting maximum of 35 A4 pages and no more than 3,500 words with the same goals for SL and HL students alike, but keep in mind that this is a project we will work on together for more than a year, with several hands-on stages to help orient you before you start working on the actual report. This project will become a cornerstone for any of you considering applying for university studies in a creative field, and many of my students who have pursued studies in Design-related fields frequently get back in touch with me to let me know how well-prepared this activity has made them.

Most of my previous and current DT students do not come from a school that helps them to learn CAD (computer aided design) programmes, so to help prepare you, Hvitfeldtska has a project for you to work on over the summer to begin to develop your skills as a designer and 3d modeler. Whether or not you have a PC, Mac or a Chromebook, this assignment is designed for you to complete it at your own pace. Once you are registered as a student in DT in August, you will be given a PC which you will need to use for your 2 years as a student. All you will need otherwise is a mouse, a smartphone with a camera and a measuring tape. After the school-start, there will be about a week before the assignment is due to meet with me and ask questions before submitting on our Google Classroom too!

If you do not complete this project by its due date, you may be asked about your intentions with the course, asked to switch levels or decide on a contingency plan for your Group 4 Subject.

If the thought of doing tutorials, working in unfamiliar computer programmes is intimidating, just know that students each year demonstrate they can do it! By the end of the first year, you will have worked not only in SketchUp, but also Tinkercad, Fusion 360, Illustrator and Photoshop (and others too, like the driver-software that operates our laser cutter, AutoLaser 2.2.1, and the one that operates our 3d printers, FlashPrint). With all of those programmes, I simply cannot teach all DT students who have registered for the course how to learn all the steps needed: independent learning, self-motivation, perseverance to identify how to solve problems creatively, and follow tutorials are attributes you will develop not only in DT but across your subjects in the DP, starting now!

If you're not included in the Google MEET for this assignment in June, then you should still visit the Google Site below that I've made with the tasks and resources to be able to complete it by the end of August 2025. I leave for vacation on June 17th, and come back to work on August 11th, so in those weeks in the middle, I will be out of contact.

Thanks, in advance, and I am looking forward to working with you in the DP!

Eric M. Saline

Design Technology and Visual Arts Teacher