Imagine for a minute that you are in a US suburb, at a manufacturing office park. The building’s grey aluminum siding is almost as depressing as its windowless interior. It’s the dead of summer in Michigan, temperatures during the day reaching 90 degrees. Your job is quality control and packaging of plastic injection molding parts. You won’t be doing this a couple times throughout the day, but somewhere close to 4,000 times that day.
This rapid fire mentality was efficient and yielded great profits for the factory that I worked in during my high school summers. However, this factory job did not lend itself to opportunities in design thinking. In fact, design thinking was discouraged. It was a job of productivity. The most important factor to my day was how many parts I had successfully packaged. Would you be surprised if I told you that not once did I talk to the mechanical engineer that oversaw this production? Probably not, because why would he? My role as the operator was to churn out as many parts as I could and not make a mistake. But what if, for a minute, I was able to use design thinking. What if that mechanical engineer had spent thirty minutes each week checking in with me, maybe explaining the process or things he was noticing? What do you think may have happened if this engineer approached me with a design cycle. It’s possible that our collaboration could have saved the company time or money or both. As a society we are focused on productivity with no time set aside for design thinking. Since reading the article, The Psychology of How Mind-Wandering and “Positive Constructive Daydreaming” Boost Our Creativity and Social Skills (Popova, 2016), I started to reflect on myself. Thinking about my many different jobs and how productivity was valued above all else in all of them. The societal expectation for constant productivity is an idea that I undoubtably grew up with. Ideas are not always valued the same as productivity but they are just as important. This idea of productivity above all else becomes ingrained and it impacts how I do my work as an educator today. The stifling of design thinking over productivity doesn't just happen in a factory, it happens in our schools. As an educator, a constant productivity mindset doesn’t give time to step back and solve problems effectively. Taking my experiences in this course, I have made steps to change this about my work. Making time to be intentional about my problem solving and looking at it through a different lens has been immensely beneficial. My biggest takeaway from this course was the implications that design has within education and my work as an educator. My ability to take the Stanford design cycle (Stanford, n.d.) and apply this to solving a problem in curriculum development, for example in my Problem of Practice during this semester, is extremely powerful. The ideation process of brainstorming and incubating from the design cycle have been useful concepts in this chaotic time of Covid-19. The idea of brainstorming in different ways and applying strategies has had the most impact. Having the knowledge and reassurance that grinding through a problem may not always be the best method. As my school’s computer science teacher and technology coordinator I am responsible for my classes, along with managing and troubleshooting the school's technology. This, as you can imagine, has not been easy given the school year has ended and my district has shifted to a remote learning initiative till the end of the school year. I am now being required to make some tough decisions and support frustrated staff with digital learning implementation. Teaching in the age of Covid-19 is going to need design thinking and the design cycle. During a digital meeting with teachers in my school, many of which are veteran teachers, a 20 year teacher began explaining how she felt like a first year teacher again. She explained that the stress and frustration of adapting her teaching to digital learning brought anxiety that she hadn’t felt since the beginning of her career. As she said this, the other five teachers shook their heads in agreement. This statement shed a light on just how powerful a moment we are having in education right now and the part design has to play in it. Moving learning to digital and online formats is not going to be an easy task, but through the right design we may be able to create something better than before. Technology gives us the ability to reach students in a different way. An example of this from this semester was our class use of Flipgrid. It was a great resource for getting a gauge on people and their ideas throughout the course. In an online course, circumstances dictated a different way of communicating with classmates and I found Flipgrid to be beneficial. It gave flexibility that video conferencing, for example, cannot provide for people in different time zones or different working hours. I saw value in the small professional learning community within Flipgrid. In a way they just made me feel less isolated from classmates. Just hearing others’ sentiments on a particular reading or video was beneficial to my learning. These ideas in the world of digital learning have extended past this course and found a place within my professional world. I have used this experience with other educators as a way of still connecting with their students in these difficult times. Project based learning, differentiation, collaboration are all still possible within these digital formats. Education will look different, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have the same impact. In fact, it may be an opportunity to have more of an impact than our previous educational system. Being intentional about design in everything that I do has helped me be a better educator. Approaching each lesson or curriculum by way of the design cycle of empathizing with my students, defining my problem, brainstorming ideas, developing a prototype and testing. Design is already changing my work for the better. As I continue helping other educators, it will impact more than just my own student’s learning. Granted, my computer science classroom looks very different from a homeroom elementary class, my class structure hasn’t changed much. Since the beginning of the year, I have been using a classroom website and Google Classroom to facilitate nearly every lesson with my students. For me, it was a fairly smooth transition for my students. Being able to share these designs with other educators and support has made the best of a terrible situation. The concept of ideation, the idea of brainstorming and incubation of ideas, has had the greatest impact on me in the last couple months. Through all the changes taking place in my school it has been the brainstorming of ideas and problem solving that has had the greatest impact. Being more intentional about the way I brainstorm has made me a better educator and support system for my school. Along with active brainstorming, I have been using the incubation process in my work. Being able to focus on ideas and intentionally walking away from them so that I can come to a better understanding or find what I may have overlooked. Throughout the chaos, there have been some good things. Teachers are looking at their lessons and more importantly their students in a different way. Seeing veteran teachers that resisted the use of technology, now problem solving and adapting. Administrators are coming from a place of “How can we do right by our community?,” instead of the next round of test scores. Parents are taking positive ownership over their children's education. All these examples give us the chance to design and innovate. People get complacent, the same is true for education. Out of tragedy there is an opportunity to persevere. New methods and structure will undoubtably be hard for some students at first, but many will thrive. I have seen examples of students that were silent in the traditional classroom group setting, now coming alive in this digital format. Students finding a voice is empowering. As life goes on for everyone, we are now looking at a new normal. Instead of looking at this with dread and despair, we can shift our focus toward an opportunity to do better by our students, parents and community. Designing a curriculum that is engaging, collaborative and promotes student ownership. References Control, V. (2019, June 13). 5 Steps of the Design Thinking Process: A Step-by-Step Guide Blog Voltage Control. Retrieved April 26, 2020, from https://voltagecontrol.com/blog/5-steps-of-the-design-thinking-process-a-step-by-step-guide/ Popova, M. (2016, June 13). The Psychology of How Mind-Wandering and "Positive Constructive Daydreaming" Boost Our Creativity and Social Skills. Retrieved from https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/10/09/mind-wandering-and-creativity/ Stanford d.school. (n.d.). Retrieved April 26, 2020, from https://dschool.stanford.edu/ Google Doc
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Introduction For my Problem of Practice, I am looking at the challenge of developing a computer science curriculum for a younger audience. I set out to design a more inclusive, rigorous computer science/technology curriculum for my kindergarten through second grade students. Being a first year kindergarten through eighth grade computer science teacher brought many challenges. From previous experience, I had the content knowledge to feel confident developing my upper elementary and middle school students curriculum. When it came to kindergarten through second grade, it was more challenging for me. For context, the format of my class is sixty minutes once a week for all K-8 classes in the school. My classroom is a computer lab with built-in rows of tables and limited floor space. Not conducive to the way that I would like to teach, especially for younger students. Working with some of these limitations and circumstances to develop a curriculum for a younger audience was my goal. Navigating the design cycle to empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test for my Problem of Practice helped develop a viable solution. Empathize Creating a character profile for my students and school using school data gave me insights to help empathize for what my students needed. The student population demographic information included 84.7% of students having hispanic heritage. The demographic data correlates with 48.2% of students having limited English proficiency. Since this data is representative of K-8, there is a larger concentration of limited English proficiency in the lower grades. This has posed a significant challenge for me this year and has affected nearly every aspect of my teaching with lower elementary. I catch myself sometimes shying away from trying new things in anticipation of language barriers. Another aspect of the student population is that 92.7% are coming from low income households. This provides new insight into technology access among my students. Technology is expensive and having a personal computer is most certainly a luxury item. This is a contributing factor for students coming into the computer lab with limited exposure to technology outside of school. This significantly impacts the starting point of my curriculum and how I am introducing technology. Rounding out my character profile for my K-2 students gave insight into what my students need most from me to be successful. While nothing I found in the data of my students was surprising, it was a good way of refocusing my attention and seeing my student’s needs through a different lens. Define My Problem of Practice is defined by my challenge to develop a computer science curriculum for a young audience. Performing a root cause analysis through reframing and drilling down into my problem provided a more comprehensive understanding of my problem. Performing a 5 Whys, Why-How Ladder and Point of View Framework activities from the Design Thinking Bootleg (2018) helped give insights in defining my Problem of Practice. The most helpful of the activities was the Point of View Framework. In this activity, I answered prompts related to my problem including; “We met, We were surprised to notice, We wonder if this means, and It would be game changing to.” It brought me closer to the information that I gathered from the Empathy Report, putting it in terms of a specific student. Drawing on personal experience with a student, there were times that I was surprised at how easy some logical sequencing activities had been. It made me wonder if this could be generalized for the rest of the students in the surrounding age band. Finally, it would be a game changer if I was able to implement these complex concepts to the rest of the age band. If students were grappling with these complex logical sequences then I should have been, at the very least, entertaining the thought of other students ability to do the same. Ideate In the ideation stage of the design process, I spent time brainstorming and incubating ideas around my newly defined Problem of Practice. This took the form of a fifteen minute brainstorming session with a friend posing my defined Problem of Practice: It is challenging to develop a computer science curriculum for a younger audience. Some key takeaways from the brainstorm were the importance of developing my own resources for my curriculum, Spanish support, ease of access and younger students' shorter attention span. These new insights did not completely shift my focus but highlighted some important considerations. Out of the brainstorming session, I considered coming up with a Google translated script for Spanish speaking friends to read and host on my classroom website. Giving students the ability to choose what works for them. Building off this idea, the resources need to be either read by me or recorded in audio so young students can work through the content independently for nonreaders. Giving sufficient amounts of time to moving around the room and not just sitting in front of a screen is important for taking attention span into consideration. The incubation process was less successful. I do see its value in this process but it was difficult to stay consistent. With more practice I could see this being a useful tool. Prototype My prototype is an Understanding by Design framework and corresponding classroom website for the K-2 computer science curriculum. The framework highlights four main categories of teaching including computer operation, algorithm/sequencing, data analysis and technological impact. The vehicle for the content will be a Google Site that I create. My students are familiar with our current classroom site and have modeled it’s structure. Working through the prototype process, helped develop my ideas and resources for the curriculum framework. It also made me realize the amount of work I have ahead of me to develop a curriculum that I am satisfied with. The areas of my curriculum that I don’t touch on in my UbD is the Spanish resources that will need to be developed. It would be premature to build out the Spanish resources before having a good base on the rest of the curriculum.
Test My problem of practice is solving the issue of computer science curriculum development for kindergarten through second grade. Helping solve this problem, I have developed Understanding by Design curriculum framework and website as prototypes. Due to the coronavirus, I had planned to be able to test in my Friday kindergarten class. But since school has been canceled for the foreseeable future, I sent the curriculum website to a few adult friends. While not ideal, they were able to provide insights to structure, content and visuals. Using the curriculum website in a classroom setting, the tiles (each week's lesson) would be hidden until I want students to access them. This would help prevent students from visiting the wrong week's lesson. Respondents were instructed to view the UbD curriculum framework, then navigate the website through the eyes of a kindergartener. Once respondents had completed the initial viewing, they were prompted with the following questions. Respondents Questions: Structure Was there anything you found that may be confusing for a kindergartener? Is there anything that you would change? Content Based on what you think a kindergartner is capable of, do you feel this is age appropriate? Is there anything you think could be added? Visuals Is there anything, stylistically, that could be improved to aid a kindergartener? Testing Results Respondents were overall satisfied with the structure, content and visuals that were provided within the prototypes. I did not sufficiently explain to respondents my intention to introduce and guide students through the information before having them try it. The material that I have put together is not meant to serve as a standalone e-learning curriculum but material that I teach first. Another observation from a respondent identified was navigation issues. It was my goal to keep the site as simple as possible to eliminate potential confusion. In doing so, I left out clear functionality to get back to the main page. The user would be able to click the top left text to navigate back but this was unclear. Moving forward, I will be including a clear consistent back button that I can identify with students at the beginning of the lesson. Conclusion In retrospect, I found the feedback valuable in helping identify things that I overlooked. Being so involved in the development of curriculum and lesson resources brought about some blindspots. Having a few people look it over and force me to explain my thought process pointed out things like first learning how to use a mouse but expecting students to be able to scroll. A fairly small oversight but one that would be crucial in the navigation and function of the lesson. A solution to my Problem of Practice is far from complete but this process has brought me much closer to achieving my goal for developing a new K-2 computer science curriculum. References Chicago Public Schools: Corkery Elementary. (2019, September). Retrieved February 2, 2020, from https://schoolinfo.cps.edu/schoolprofile/schooldetails.aspx?SchoolId=609870 Corkery Elementary. (n.d.). Retrieved February 2, 2020, from https://www.greatschools.org/illinois/chicago/1016-Corkery-Elementary-School/ Holcomb S, Doorley S, Klebahn P, et al. (2018) Design Thinking Bootleg. In: Stanford d.school. Retrieved April 22, 2020 from https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/design-thinking-bootleg LINKS Curriculum Website UbD Curriculum Framework Final Report Google Doc
This video shows protocols and a walkthrough for my Problem of Practice prototypes. Both the developed UbD curriculum framework and website are featured as I explain the testing process. My Problem of Practice is developing a computer science curriculum for a younger audience. Finding curriculum resources for my Kindergarten-2nd grade students is difficult and even more so for my ESL students. Creating my own curriculum and resources will allow my students to have greater accessibility to computer science concepts. Unfortunately, due to extenuating circumstances I was unable to test with young students. Instead, I sent this out to colleagues and friends to help get feedback. Testers were given instructions to look through prototypes through the eyes of a kindergartener and then answer prompts including questions around structure, content, and visuals. While this prototype is not a complete curriculum, it is on its way to being a valuable computer science resource for reaching younger students.
https://youtu.be/77tRgwRWnwA Testing Video Reflection_Google Doc Curriculum Lesson Website Computer Science Curriculum UbD Framework My problem of practice is solving the issue of computer science curriculum development for kindergarten through second grade. Helping solve this problem, I have developed Understanding by Design curriculum framework and website as prototypes.
Due to the situation of coronavirus, I had planned to be able to test in my Friday kindergarten class. But since school has been canceled for the foreseeable future, I sent the curriculum website to a few adult friends. While not ideal, they were able to provide insights to structure, content and visuals. On the curriculum website, two weeks have been completed. Using this in a classroom setting, the tiles (each week's lesson) would be hidden until I want students to access them. This would help prevent students from visiting the wrong week's lesson. The events of the coronavirus has also impacted my ability to provide language translation resources for non-readers. Respondents were instructed to view the UbD curriculum framework, then navigate the website through the eyes of a kindergartener. Once respondents had completed the initial viewing, they were prompted with the following questions. Respondents Questions: Structure Was there anything you found that may be confusing for a kindergartener? Is there anything that you would change? Content Based on what you think a kindergartner is capable of, do you feel this is age appropriate? Is there anything you think could be added? Visuals Is there anything, stylistically, that could be improved to aid a kindergartener? Testing Results: Respondents were overall satisfied with the structure, content and visuals that were provided within the website. One respondent posed a question about the student’s ability to scroll on the page. This was a great point and one that I will go revisit and address. Something that was not explained beforehand to respondents was my intention to introduce and guide students through the information before sending them on their way to try it on their own. The material that I have put together is not meant to serve as a standalone e-learning curriculum but material that I teach first. Another observation that another respondent identified was navigation issues. It was my goal to keep the site as simple as possible to eliminate potential confusion. In doing so, I left out clear functionality to get back to the main page. The user would be able to click the top left text to navigate back but this was unclear. Moving forward, I will be including a clear consistent back button that I can identify with students at the very beginning of the lesson. Conclusion: In retrospect, I found the feedback very valuable in helping identify things that I overlooked. Being so involved in the development of curriculum and lesson resources brought about some blindspots. Having a few people look it over and force me to explain my thought process pointed out things like first learning how to use a mouse but expecting students to be able to scroll. A fairly small oversight but one that would be crucial in the navigation and function of the lesson. No matter the problem, collaboration with others can show aspects to your potential solution that you can easily overlook. UbD Curriculum Framework Curriculum Website Google Doc_Testing Report |
AuthorMy name is Ryan MacLeod and I live in Seattle, WA. I am currently a K-8 Lab Coordinator. I have a passion for educational technology integration and curriculum design, especially when it comes to the social sciences. Archives
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