1. Discovery Phase - Design Thinking Paragraph
The learning curve was very steep this week, to say the least. Design thinking is not a foreign concept to me. Working on an intense Design Thinking project for seven weeks with two peers is a new experience for me. I have participated in Design Thinking professional development and have led students through various Design Thinking cycles. Most of these learning experiences have lasted one to two days and have not required the amount of work that this project will surely entail. In order to complete The Discovery Phase of our Design Thinking collaborative project, this past Saturday my team and I met for more than two hours via a Google Hangout in order to try to narrow our project focus, share our particular expertise, and determine next steps. Each of us currently work with English Learners in some capacity so we were able to quickly find a common interest. As we delved into our understandings, narrow our focus onto English Learners in secondary education. We also shared questions that we had relating to these learners and other stakeholders with interests in the success of English Learner education. From this process, we decided that our focus question would be, “How can we close the achievement gap between English Learners and other students?” We arrived at this question by trying to keep our interests, future research, and eventual ideation and prototyping open ended enough to lead us towards wholly unanticipated solutions. We are still working on researching those questions that we lack answers for and by attempting to gain more empathy for our end users. While we have yet to conclude our research, it is clear that this process will help us arrive at some very powerful realizations and potential solutions that can help address the challenges that English Learners have in pursuing success in their educational pursuits. I am filled with anticipation about the discoveries that lie ahead for our team. 2. Creating a vision incorporating 21st Century Skills and Design Thinking I am a founding faculty member for a Design Thinking themed middle school which is currently wrapping up its second year in existence. As a founding faculty member I helped to craft a mission and vision for our school which believe incorporated 21st Century Skills and Design Thinking exceptionally well. Vista Innovation and Design Academy’s mission is “To nourish the creative thinking skills of students and approach learning through the well renowned Design Thinking process that will empower students to take what they have learned and apply those skills to create non-traditional solutions to yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s problems.” We promote this vision through our core values which are summed up in the acronym, GILLS. The G represents “Grit to persevere”, I represents, “Innovating through design”, the first L represents “Learning about Empathy”, the second L represents “Leading with integrity”, and the S represents “Sparking Creativity”. Our students can recite the “GILLS” from memory and our teachers structures unit plans, lesson plans, and grading philosophies to embody our core values. In addition to this school visions statement and core value, I have also created created a vision specific to our use and integration of technology. Our vision for technology states, that “At VIDA we know that it is not IF students use technology but HOW students use technology. Our technology philosophy integrates our GILLS... to INNOVATE, DESIGN, CREATE for deeper learning.” We have created goals around this vision such as
3. What does your learning space say about the learning you want for your students? We have been fortunate to be able to purchase new furniture and to create spaces which support the type of learning that have committed to. Our furniture is flexible, moveable, and hardly ever set out in rows. Students are able to collaborate with one another with ease and move the furniture aside when appropriate. We have also created “makerspaces” in three different location throughout the site as well as a few others within classrooms as well. In short, we set out to create spaces that encourage creative collaboration and flexibility and this is precisely what happens throughout any given day at Vista Innovation and Design Academy.
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