• A box or bag filled with a variety of different styles of shoes (one of each is OK)--for example, sport shoe, work boot, dressy shoe, sandal, child's shoe, and whatever other examples you can find. (If possible, acquire these from the place in your closet where old shoes go to die, thrift shops, tag sales, etc., so that they are expendable.)
• As an alternative, borrow one shoe from everyone in the workshop.

1. Ask participants: What does the term designer clothes/shoes/ jeans mean?" (One of the first responses you hear may be, "It means expensive!") Follow-up questions include:
   • What is the difference (other than price) between designer clothes and other clothes?.
   • Who designs designer clothes?.
   • Who designs other clothes?
   • What does a designer do?

   Guide the discussion to get to the idea that even non-designer clothes are designed by someone, and that a designer makes decisions about how clothing looks.

   Things Can Be and Have Been Designed in Nore than One Way

2. Bring out your bag or box of shoes and give participants time to examine them all carefully. Then ask, "How are these shoes alike, and how are they different from one another?" Help participants identify similarities (what makes a shoe a shoe) and differences (materials, kind of heel; slip-on, laces, or velcro; color; style; decorations; etc.).
   

   Then ask,

   • Why are these shoes different from one another?
   • Why don't all shoes look alike?.

   Participants should come to the conclusions that different kinds of shoes serve different purposes, and that affects how they look; and that shoe designers think not only about what a shoe looks like, but about its function as well.

   Making Choices: Understanding the Design Process
   

3. Finally, ask:
   • What kinds of decisions do shoe designers make as they design shoes?
   • What kinds of decisions have to do with the shoes' intended function (e.g., material that is strong for work boots, an eye-catching heel style for fashion shoes, special soles for sport shoes), and
   • What decisions have to do with looks or fashion (color, heel design, decorations)?
   • How do the decisions that designers make affect how a shoe is eventually made? What has to happen first, second, third, etc.?
   • Engage participants with Imagination Place! poster -- side 2.
4. Ask participants to sketch designs for two different shoes, in their Design Notebooks:
   • A shoe that is intended for a specific purpose (e.g., a fashion shoe, a walking-in-snow shoe)
   • A shoe in which there's a conflict between fashion and function (e.g., a shoe made of glass, patent leather work books).

Have Participants visit:

Wacky World of Whatchamacallits'Wacky Puzzles, play with Puzzle 1: Shirtmakerand develop a similar X-pression of their own.

Design Xchange Design Specs 2, consider specific needs and develop an Xpression that reveals their thinking.

Word Wave Chat Invitiationsand begin to think about inviting others to chat about X-pressions they have created in Imagination Place! in KAHooTZ.

Continue to give participants the opportunity to explore the features of Imagination Place!

During this workshop session, participants will have an opportunity to create an Imagination Place! Xpression of their own. It is important that they begin to understand the language of the on-line environment. The KAHooTZ on-line help has extensive information about the environment. Where you can find specific information is given below.

• About Xpressions -- Information about the basic building blocks of KAHooTZ.
  
• About Create -- Find out more about creating backgrounds, draw, stamps, sound and text -- elements that are used to create Xpressions.
  
• Xpressions: How do I -- Create -- Information on starting, testing and changing Xpressions.
  
• Saving my Xpression (in "How do I Create) Learn how to save Xpressions you have created.
  
• Publish an Icon Information about making an icon available to the KAHooTZ world.
  
• About Mail Find out basic information about mail in KAHooTZ.
  
• How Do I Mail? Learn what you need to know to use mail in KAHooTZ.
  

Note: Be sure that each participant has an icon that has been published to KAHooTZ.

• Encourage participants to make sketches of the shoe designs described above.
• Invite participants to design a piece of clothing. Encourage them to consider details such as pockets, buttons, patterns, and decoration.
• Ask for volunteers to read their ideas about technology, invention, design, and imagination. Encourage participants to discuss each others' ideas.
• Ask participants to write a paragraph about a shoe or any item of clothing they own, describing in as much detail as possible what it looks like, what special features it has, how it's made, and its intended function. Ask them to think about which features are decorative and which are functional.
• Suggest that participants collect pictures of things that they think are especially well-designed. Encourage them to think about the specific qualities they like about these well-designed things.

Gender Issues

Based on what you know about your participants' level of sophistication and self-awareness, you may want to raise the issue of how gender seems to influence attitudes toward technology. Get your participants to talk about their own attitudes and feelings, and to describe experiences they've had with technology.

Extension

If possible, give your participants the time and tools to take the shoes apart! As they do, ask them to look at how the shoes are put together and to try to identify individual parts and their functions. Also invite them to speculate about what kinds of machines are necessary to make shoes. They can draw or write about their ideas in their Design Notebooks.