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.

Open Space Modernation

Modernation = modern moderation; moving the moveable to make room for the masses to create space for the new generation's nation.

I've found that not having furniture in my new space has allowed for quick readjustments and strong collaborative work. The students pictured have made their own large group work circles and have not strayed from these areas for over forty minutes. Just an observation.

It's true at times the room echoes as I have "take the stage" as-it-were. At the same time the loud work of collaboration takes place.

It's not the rows that matter, but what you're doing with the students in them.

Differentiated Structures

Resources:
For a Grade 6 Science, Drama, and Career & Technology Studies Cross Collaboration

When things don't work out in class, I'm often excited because I usually get a chance to try things twice.  In drama I am always harping on the potential of failures as the best learning experience, and the most amazing fun is had in improvisation games when people "play on the edge of losing".

Problem
How do you give Grade 6 students an inquiry project that involves group work, each task allows space for differentiation and the whole thing takes place in a huge open auditorium without the whole group descending into a scenario which might inspire a story along the lines of, oh, let's say, "Lord of the Flies"?

The struggle is allowing them to complete tasks and objectives at differentiated speeds, and keeping group members accountable to each other, when the maturity level to keep numbers of tasks, and impulse control in check.  The first time I tried this, no matter how much structure  I hoped to create, the structure would break down within minutes.

The solution came today:  Task oriented assignments, where individuals in the group are responsible for ensuring that the order of tasks are kept in place, that no one is allowed to get ahead of the group, that the sequencing is constructive, and that the objectives are given in simple, easy to remember language.

I know, not that revolutionary, but for a teacher of older students it came as somewhat of a shock when the results came in so easily.

To Begin:

• Five students in a group.
• Four groups.
• Two different assignments in the room.
• One assignment per group.

To Solve:

• Five objectives.
• One per group member.
•  Each designed to accelerate the brainstorm process, but also support the structure of the activity.

Observations
Each group met the objectives at a pace that worked for them.  Though the assignments were different, the structure for completing the assignment was left intact which allowed for easy guidance as students ran into road-blocks, or had questions.  Students who had the responsibility of guiding the first objective were being prodded by the student who had the second objective to do a good job and complete it quickly because they were waiting to take leadership for the next objective.

There was evidence of strong intrinsic motivation in the students, there was less disruption in the large room. There was more focus on the work in front of them and consequently there was more success.  Each student was granted space to be creative and work in ways that brought their personality and strengths to the group, but there wasn't so much room that they had no idea where to start, or became "overly creative".  There was accountability to each other, and I'm pleased to say that I was able to do this all in half the amount of time the second go-round.




Mystery Tales by Thomas Currie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at docs.google.com.

Technology Abuse: A Solution?

One of the biggest problems we encountered with technology use in our school last year was the abuse of the physical technology itself.  Keys were being pulled off to be reorganized as a prank.  Students were finding ways to change the accessibility options to confuse less computer-literate students and ultimately their profiles were becoming corrupted due to an overwhelming tendency of students wanting to "personalize" their profiles in Windows.

I didn't encounter this problem in my classes... what I mean is, I did not notice this activity happening in my class, just the frustration that my students had having to deal with the ramifications of these behaviours happening in other classes.

So what was the difference?

I believe it comes from two things:

1. Having looked into Sugata Mitra's SOLE project research I have determined that the best course of action when giving students access to computers they do not own (particularly at the upper-middle class middle school level) is to assign one computer per four students.  This tends to allow students to self govern and does seem to keep them on-task and less likely to personalize.  This is particularly important for times of student-directed research.
2. Currently I am working with students on creating personal reflections.  I have had the students create an outline of what they wish to create first, and on paper, and then submit to me their ideas and explain which technology they would like to use to create the final version of the project.  This limits the amount of time they have access to the computers, and also ensures that they have a plan of action before they ever log-on.  Students are using computers now to enhance their personal responses, if the computer is the appropriate tool, and the use of the computer is happening in a more responsible manner.  Most importantly students do not appear to be "killing time" before they can take the project home to work on.

My criticism of practices that I'm seeing elsewhere is best summed up by an allegory:
When you hand a hammer to a student and say use this, they will, but not necessarily for what you intended.  If you hand them a nail and a piece of wood they'll choose the hammer because it's the correct tool to put the two together.

In conclusion, may I encourage you with this: Don't hand students technology because you want them to use the technology, hand them the project and have them choose the technology to use.  In the meantime it is your responsibility to model as many different TOOLS as you can in your lessons.