Frugal Education
Creative, practical, and sustainable education
The concept takes its inspiration from the practice of Frugal Innovation: the art of reducing the complexity and cost of products and services, and their production, to meet the needs of developing countries, conscious consumerism, and sustainability. Building on this foundation, the concept incorporates aspects of design thinking, systems thinking, the circular economy, doughnut economics, and sustainable development, and applies them within an education context.
Design with an
Open Mind
Leverage Available
Resources
Build at the Speed
Of Need
On this site you’ll find a set of guiding principles, each of which has been broken down into three frugal aspects. Whatever you’re looking to create, from in-class activity to learning space; module content to course design; innovation lab to university campus; we recommend you consider each aspect, and their relationship to one another, to help guide you in the creation of great frugal education practice.
Latest Posts
PiCapture: Designing the Desktop App Foundation
To partner the motion capture system we need to develop a high quality software application that will be easy to expand with new features over time. As a Mac user with a little experience using Apple's Swift programming language and user interface capabilities, I've...
PiCapture: Designing the Prototype Hub
Due to its proximity to the wearer's body, we need to keep the hub's profile as slim as possible. The result will hopefully be a clear plastic enclosure roughly the size and thickness of a pack of playing cards. A similar sized power bank will power the hub located in...
PiCapture: Building the Proof of Concept
After some rummaging around on the web followed by a gruelling struggle to get the Raspberry Pi Zero to allow code editing and execution over USB I finally managed to set up the Pi to act as my MoCap system's hub. The Pi Zero is a full-blown computer and not set up...
PiCapture: The Hardware Setup
In order to develop the hardware for the motion capture system, I'll need to purchase more specialised sensors needed to capture the motion data. There’s no other way around this, these sensors are tailored for this kind of use case and there are no viable...
Open-Source Motion Capture: A Frugal Education Project
As I mentioned in my previous post, my experiments in AI collaboration for project development have been very successful so far. The success of this initial experiment has inspired a larger follow-on project that builds on the collaboration approach, this time taking...
Creative Collaboration with AI: Designing and Coding Motion Capture Systems with ChatGPT
Continuing from my earlier noodlings with AI and Raspberry Pi for frugal design, I spent the Christmas break delving deeper into my motion capture project. One of the major milestones between family shindigs and country walks was building out the triangulation code...
Low-Cost Innovation: Exploring Motion Capture Sensor Design using Raspberry Pi and AI
Over the past three days, I’ve been immersed in a motion capture lab held across our cluster of research centers. What began as an exploration into experimental MIDI controllers has unexpectedly evolved into a deeper, more ambitious side project: designing a low-cost...
Frugal Design Thinking: Students Craft STEAM Makerspace Project using the Frugal Education Cards
I'm always excited to share stories that showcase frugal education practice in action, and today, I'm delighted to bring you an inspiring tale from a group of masters students at the Asian University for Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh that used the frugal education...
The PlayLab Bus Project: A Journey in Frugal Education Innovation in Malaysia
In the heart of Malaysia, a revolutionary educational project is transforming the way students engage with STEM subjects. The PlayLab Bus project, a cornerstone of the ACES international research project, is an exemplary model of frugal education that creatively...
A Conversation on Frugal Education: Insights from my AACE Review Interview
I recently had the privilege of being interviewed by Stefanie Panke for the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Review. This was a fantastic opportunity to delve into the ideas and motivations behind my work, particularly the “Frugal...
Defining Frugal Education: A Position Paper
I'm pleased to share my latest paper on frugal education. This research delves into how frugal innovation practices can revolutionise educational environments by leveraging available resources creatively and sustainably. In the wake of the global pandemic, the...
Sharing is Caring: Showing off your work is a good thing!
I thought I'd post this book recommendation after a series of interesting conversations at work about how our specific team shares its work online. Through blogs, websites, and social media we've built an engaged community of like-minded educators, creators, and...
Recognising the Success of ACES: A Frugal Education Triumph at the QS Reimagine Education Awards
At the recent QS Reimagine Education awards, we were elated to clinch the Bronze award for Sustainability Education! This prestigious accolade recognises the remarkable impact of the ACES project, an initiative that has successfully integrated frugal education and...
Talking Frugal Education on the Pedagodzilla Podcast!
I recently had the pleasure of meeting the Pedagodzilla podcast boys at this years's GameChangers RemixPlay 5 event and sat down for a chat along with Sylvester Arnab to talk about about frugal education and playful learning. As always, they did a stellar job of...
Remix Play 5: Reflections
This week we finally got to deliver the GameChangers: Remix Play 5 event, which was sadly cancelled last Autumn due to the passing of the Queen. It was a resounding success and included a host of inspiring talks and playful activities. The theme this time around was...
Frugal Education in Malaysia, visiting Learning Science students at UNIMAS
A few weeks ago, early on a cold Saturday morning in the UK, I was fortunate enough to present on frugal education to Masters students studying Learning Sciences at UNIMAS (Univiersiti Malaysia Sarawak). My friend and ACES research colleague Dr. Fitri Mohamad invited...
#Dispatches: Current Projects and Changes Ahead
It’s been a busy few months in the GameChangers team with new research bids in development, ongoing case studies in full swing within the ACES project, and a whole host of other initiatives underway at various stages of development. There isn’t much I can share at...
Recognition of Playful Research Excellence in the REF 2021!
We had some wonderful news recently as the GameChangers initiative was included as one of Coventry University's impact cases for the Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF2021) gaining a 4 star rating for research excellence in the process! (that 4 out of 4 btw 🤩)....
#Dispatches: LEGO Serious Play without the LEGO!
I was speaking to a colleague today who had a question about using Minecraft as a potential alternative to LEGO in a teaching environment. He was looking for something he could deliver virtually as some of the lessons he delivers are now online as a result of the...
A ‘Living’ Model for Frugal Education
An idea that I've been noodling around with for a while now is a model to represent frugal education design. I want something simple that I can share with people to more clearly articulate the idea with fewer words. I'd rather save those words for a paper in the near...