What Drives the Wheel: On Becoming an Affective Opportunity Designer

And yes, I do mean 'affective'...

At the very core, I am a Middle School Teacher.  I can’t help it. It’s tough to put my finger on exactly what it is that lends to the comfort I feel around those between the ages of 11 and 15 - it’s certainly not the smell, but I find them to be some of the most interesting, inspiring, and authentic people on the planet.

I teach at a gifted school which means they can be some of the most anxious, intense, and abstract teens you can come across.  Recently I met “Landon.”

Landon had a falling out with his bus driver.  An issue of injustice arose and Landon has spent over a week trying to calm down in and out of the Administration Office.  His focus in class is entirely diminished, his capacity for positive contribution is at an all-time low, and the structure of school is continually rubbing salt into the wound.

When I met Landon, I had no idea of any of this.  He was just like any other student who comes to the Makerspace lately to gather around the new 3D printer I invested in.

I’m really passionate about Education.  When I say education, I’m really passionate about the Positive Affect of intentional designed pedagogy.  I create opportunities like this in the Makerspace and I’m always excited to share with the students that I’ve only just opened the door -- it is up to my “Makerbots” to take everything to the next level.

Landon was curious how he might get access to print off ideas of his own on the 3D printer.  This led to a conversation about creating a structured economy that could reward algorhythmic work with “Currie-Coins” and would provide a stipend for all students of 150 Vygots.  As an aside he noticed that there was an open design challenge in the Makerspace to create a handheld vacuum that would be well suited to clean the glue build-up at the bottom of the new Ultimaker.

Landon appeared two days later with a list of materials he was hoping to find in the makerspace and a napkin-drawing of a mini-vacuum.  He peppered me with questions about the mechanics and showed me what he was intending.  I was able to point out a few design flaws and he returned the next day with a working prototype.  People were amazed and inspired by his work and he was pretty proud of himself.  He wasn’t done.  He took it home and started designing nozzles for it.  He prettied it up, and here is a picture of the “finished” vacuum after a week of after school work.

That’s when Landon started to talk to me about a “Bank”.  It would seem that he was keeping himself up at night trying to solve the problem of managing and tracking the PLA currency exchange.  He had gone so far as drawing up a prototype cheque, ledger sheet, file-cabinet and even a work-plan for how to manage bank-employees should we need it.  Landon, in his hyperintense excitabilities was trapped in a problem-feedback loop that needed adjustment or he was going to meltdown.

Landon is in Grade 6.  Let that sink in while I provide the following tangent:

I collect evidence of how SSID applies in my line of work because I’ve become passionate about the Double-Loop Learning Model as the engine that drives the practices teachers have been asked to employ to improve learning.   It applies to Design Thinking, Understanding by Design, Backwards Design, Project Based Learning, Challenge Based Learning or any of the umpteen practices we’ve labelled to assess our practice.  It’s the magic that makes the work, well, work.

At the time I meet Landon I had just recently finished designing and creating a reward coin for the Middle School Robots club and I realized I had a great object-lesson for my Grade 10 Applied Design, Skills and Technology class that showed the opportunity design model as a series of “Marshmallow On-Top” moments.

 

I was able to share this story with Landon and we had a conversation about looking at what the real problem with the Maker-Economy is.  The conversation allowed us to establish that Landon needs to identify what he’s really passionate about.  In twenty minutes of intense and inspiring Empathy Mapping I was able to point Landon toward learning to find elements of the challenge that were appropriate for his level of technical skill, and in a direction that would ultimately excite and inspire him.

Landon returned the next day and said “Mr. Currie, I thought a lot about that model you showed me last night, and I realized that I do have to go slowly and start small with the Bank.  I really want to go in a direction of making something with my hands that sorts coins instead of trying to make an entire business model for a bank.”

My administrator approached me and related that Landon was suddenly doing really well.  I receive a lot of affirmation that my work has a tangible Positive Affect on the students who are exposed to what I do - My grade 8’s laughed at me the other day and mentioned they didn’t see me as a teacher, so much as “some dude who like teaches us what we need to know” which made me smile.  What I have noticed is that over the last three months the culture I hope to promote has been accelerating and spiraling outward at an increased rate.  But this story isn’t about me.  It’s about Landon.

Landon has arrived at a Procedural and Affective knowledge of Opportunity Design as a result of my own Functional skill as an Opportunity Designer.  I have refined that skill by teaching with Empathy, Imagination, Inspiration, Creative Confidence and the ability to Tell a Story.  Landon and I are both better for it.

Reflaluating Design Thinking

It's an ugly word, but it's mine: 

reflaluation - that process which both evaluates and allows for reflection on an experience.

It implies that we find the value in, and also find ways of curating the salient artifacts of the experience.  To that end I hope to record the experience of my foray into leading Grade 8 students in Design Thinking.

Preface

Maker Kits

As with most things in teaching, one workshop is often enough to inspire activation of a new way of doing things but it does not an expert make.  We (as teachers) are often required to wear the mask of "expert" in the face of the students while being continually aware that we might only understand the process from a distance.  It is those who are willing to risk getting it wrong in public who welcome new process into their classrooms without intense study and mentoring.  The irony being that so many professional development mandates demand that a teacher indicate how they will immediately apply the expense that has been made to bring in the experts.

I, as you may have read, have recently been exposed to Design Thinking.  I am not a Design Thinking expert though I do find that it lends itself to my natural inclinations well and so, perhaps, I am more an expert than I realize.  Having been exposed to the vernacular and handed the template it was only a matter of opportunity that would allow for immediate experimentation.

Alberta's Mechanical Systems unit for Grade 8 lends itself well to the #MakerEd movement, and is rich in room for students to thinker and ideate. (not my words)

Fruits of Thinkering

The  project (still and always in refinement) was installed in partnership with the Grade 8 teachers who would normally be responsible for this Unit.  They, in a sense, partnered with the Learning Commons to go deeper into the mechanics of Design Thinking as they scaffolded the physics of  Mechanical Systems.  It would be another blog post entirely that would properly address how an entire unit was captured by Design Thinking, what I want to reflaluate here is on one element of what happened that was unexpected:  rich partnerships.

Reflaluation

In design thinking methodology a student is made responsible for recording and empathizing with another student's ideas.  They become active listeners and engagement experts hoping to draw out the best from the person they are listening to.  That in itself could be enough but yesterday I noticed something deeper: Trust.

Making groups is common in a classroom, and Design Thinking makes group-work better.  There is something that happens in the community though that has inspired me to share; students forge trust.

Under Pressure

Item 1:  Students are often asked NOT to work with their friends as they are familiar, too common, and often sources of distraction.  In Design Thinking it is possible for students to gravitate to their friends.  Where this would normally be something that does not expand a student's experience in this case it is actually an excellent place to start.  When you become responsible for your friend's work, and you are asked to represent your friend's work to others in the group there is a loyalty there that means a student who might normally "phone-in" the work is now directly responsible for the way that their friend looks in the eyes of others.  Particularly for the boys, but I suspect for all of the students, this addition of risk draws out better work from two friends than you might expect to see, and it also solidifies a relationship between two students.

Item 2:  Students might be put into a situation where they are working with someone they would not normally choose to experience learning with, much less speak to.  They might be encountering this partner for the first time, and in that experience they are presented to the unfamiliar as being a responsive, engaged, active listener who will stand up and advocate on behalf of their partner who knows that they are not owed this grace given the social context of a middle-school classroom.  The amount of trust that this builds between two unfamiliar people; the way that it sets up two strangers to demonstrate the capacity for reliability, loyalty, and friendship appears organically, is not contrived (as it so often is) and is allowed to happen naturally.   The authenticity of the experience can bring out the best in the community (in this case the classroom) and creates yet more impetus for employing Design Thinking structure in any and all of the activities which involve collaboration in the classroom.

Maker Day VPK

It could be that I am a product of my mentors, or that I choose my mentors as a product of my mentality.  Either way Susan Crichton remains an important connection whom I am privileged to share an remarkable amount of pedagogical ethos.

Yesterday I was invited to participate in a Maker Day hosted by Victoria Park High School in Lethbridge AB facilitated by Susan and Deb from the UBC Okanagan Innovative Learning Centre.

A Social Wall as a way for Introverts to Connect

I was invited because within my local network it was felt that what we are doing in the Westmount Learning Commons is very much inline with what this PD opportunity was addressing, and it was time to visit and measure where we are at against this research-based, professionally driven ideology of "Make".

What has struck me, seven years later, about why Susan et al are important mentors is that they teach philosophy not by speaking about it, but simply creating within it.  You buy into the philosophy not because of their rhetoric but because you experience the positive results of having learned from within it.  I believe it is no accident then that we have found ourselves employing "design-thinking" in how we are addressing the desire for structural change for the population of special-needs students within our school walls.

To begin with you may wish to peruse this Tool-Kit provided by @UBCOILC.  This information has been used now to show that Gifted Ed at Westmount naturally aligns with Design-Thinking because as a gifted educator (duality implied) I believe in;

1. Inside Out: the idea that a student requires accommodation, or rather "space" made for the student's innate abilities and proclivities the which have been derived through a reflection of oneself within one's community, and reinforced by all whom they encounter in a day.
2. Lateral Thinking:  the idea that an 'exceptional' student is naturally inclined toward 'outside the box' attitudes, interests, aspirations, and abilities; in particular the ability to approach an abstraction with ease.
3. Enriched Content: the idea that without meaningful and relatable challenges, the exceptional student struggles with desire to learn unless motivated by a desire to 'please'.
4. Community: the idea that 'exceptional' students feel isolated unless offered access to peers and mentors who are capable of, or trained to relate to the complex abstractions, emotions, or anxieties of those students.
5. Ego: the idea that the 'exceptional student' is aware of their exceptional abilities and must be coached to appreciate and value the contributions of those who may not share the same exceptional abilities.

To Make (according to Mark Hatch, writer of The Maker Movement Manifesto 2014) "is fundamental to what it means to be human.  We must make, create, and express ourselves to feel whole."  To be "gifted" is to be "human" and the essential humaness of a "gifted" student is to "feel that humaness" in exceptional ways.

Novices are allowed access to Tools

Making (according to the Manifesto) involves "sharing what you have made and what you know about making with others... the act of making puts a small piece of you in the object.  Giving that to someone else is like giving someone a small piece of yourself... [it is a] movement, and it requires emotional, intellectual, financial, political, and institutional support."

Here we see that Making reflects the first and the fourth values on our list.

Continuing, "You must learn to make".  Here my own personal philosophy, and that shared by some of my group on Thursday is that it might also be true to say "you must MAKE to LEARN."  Mark mentions that Making is "being playful with what you are making [ultimately allowing you to] be surprised, excited, and proud of what you discover".  The spirit of "a maker" is that a maker desires to "learn, and push yourself to learn new techniques, materials, and processes."

Part of our Design Churette

Here we see the modern educators desire for rigor and mastery of curriculum, but it is paired with the intrinsic motivation of the student to be curious and the follow through on that curiosity, in a structured, intentional way which allows the student to document that experience, and ultimately allow others to evaluated the efficacy of that experience.  This model allows for enriching, personalized learning which is also structured in such a way as to allow a teacher to navigate mandated curricula.  It also provides, in the design of the "Churette" a way to coach those whom have been engaged in the sharing to properly express feedback that is deeper and more meaningful than flattery or derisiveness.

The design thinking method itself (which is very similar to the rules laid out in Improvisational Theatre - a topic I explore in a "Why Dramaticscience?") allows for a student to develop abstract, lateral thinking solutions to important, valuable, meaningful problems, but the solution itself is corporately derived and demands contribution from all parties.  It is never done "by oneself" and by nature does not allow one person to "own" an idea.  It allows a community to draw from its strengths without relying on mandated corporate buy-in; something I have found to be very unsuccessful in a classroom environment, particularly so with gifted students.  The anecdotes shared in another post, "The Excellent and Most Lamentable Tragedy of Teaching" speak to this. To sum up, here we see the third and fifth values of our school reflected in the structure of the design thinking exercise.

So I now understand why our Library Learning Commons Maker Space has been so well received, and has encouraged disenfranchised students to step out of isolation and approach the school for support of their own personal learning goals.  The Maker Space has provided the technology that was missing; the tools, accessibility, supervision, and space for students to independently arrive at their own conclusions, explore things which are curious, report their curiosities, and be in proximity (ergo relationship) with master-makers and mentors.

It has been grounded accidentally on purpose in the ethic and structure of "Design Thinking" and has been crafted carefully and intentionally in "relationship" with the stake-holders.

The next step is to provide this experience to the staff who routinely encounter new meaningful, valuable, important problems in education and have at least two days at the beginning of every year to bond and align as a community united in vision, or spiral out to their "silos" engaged in the ritual of classroom management... but now I'm just being petty. ;)

An Augmented Reality Sandbox

Two years ago, while sitting with my then 3yo son, and an iPad I was exploring an app called Science360 which allows you to spin a sphere of videos and articles - science related - and choose what interests you.  My son is/was a nut for science-related media and one of the videos we discovered together was this video published by Oliver Kreylos of UCDavis:

Being a science-8 teacher in Alberta meant I immediately saw how this tool could be used to open learning for Water Systems.  I added it to the list of things I wish I had time to build. Of late, the job situation has changed and I found myself with - time to build -.  Project one was to create my own Augmented Reality Sandbox, with the help of students, in the middle of the school-library during lunchtime. I spent some time with the open-source instructions published here: http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/SARndbox/ a National Science Foundation sponsored research project that has been published online for all to enjoy. Having established a rapport with the school I went out and purchased $2K of hardware to run the software and started developing relationships with the students and parents of the school and quickly found myself a very helpful and talented Architectural specialist, Vera Parlac who sketched up a design for housing our sandbox.

The soon to be built "Sandbox"

A $1200 box and a borrowed screen

Using calgaryfreecycle.org as a daily point of "found-treasure" I was able to locate some free wood, and incorporated an old desk that was being turfed by the school, and a defunct bookshelf from the library storage.  All of this was put together to hold my version of Frankenstein's Monster using the expertise of mostly grade 5 and 6 students who would rather cut, measure, and fasten than play out in the mild Calgary fall weather.

Learning to remove old nails

Learning to wield a saw

It took a few months to get to a point where programming would take place, and that stage (for those of us who struggle following step-by-step instructions) was easily the most difficult.  Thankfully the read-me files supplied with the programs answered the majority of questions, and there is an online forum for those who wish to participate globally in making more and more of these projects.

A bookcase on an old desk

Hockey-tape and wire... nature's solution

When the time came to calibrate, and after some major troubleshooting, my son and I stuck our hands into the sandbox, at school, in a library, and welcomed parents and students to come and play with us.

The infinite Sandbox

Playing in the dirt

The learning is obvious, but the reactions are my favourite part.  Such positive, responsive, and authentic joy being demonstrated by all ages.  The only question that comes up now; what's next Mr. C?!