Teaching to Teachers, Learning from Learners (Part 2)

This is the second poster realized by the teachers attending the “TFA” School for secondary school teachers held at the Politecnico di Milano during the academic year 2012/2013. It shows the results of the Laboratorio di Disegno e Rappresentazione Geometrica (literally Drawing and Graphic Representation Studio), taught by the author mentioned above. Aiming to investigate the educational foundations of graphic representation, alongside the discussion about the role and the function of the visual language in the field of Technology, as well as about the basic principles of Projective and Descriptive Geometry in relation to the prospective ways they could be taught nowadays, some other complementary topics have been examined, in order to understand whether they could be proposed to secondary school learners. Among these, the physical analogy with the light castings, the enigmatic effects produced when special distortions affect images and spaces generating illusory perceptions, the geometrical structure of the hyperspaces, the new visual possibilities offered by the latest digital media, including some very familiar visual apps available on mobile devices, also emphasizing the connections of the visual language with other disciplines. All these topics have been discussed in class and tested with secondary school students, who enthusiastically welcomed the proposed issues and participated in the activities, showing significant improvements. Some of these experiences have been collected in the figures of the poster presented here and summarized in the following comments.