CUNY Academic Commons

For this project, I explored Design Thinking for Educators, which included five steps.

1. Discovery
2. Interpretation
3. Ideation
4. Experimentation
5. Evolution
6. Enjoy (I added this one to celebrate the process)

My project was about designing a new garden in my yard.  During covid, I discovered that I love to garden and have been slowly turning my yard from grass to gardens, adding a new one each year.  The design thinking supported the process I take during the planning and implementation stages of gardening.

I used canvas for this project and explored their infographic designs which helped to structure the work.  I learned how many options they have for graphics and how easy it is to create and share with this tool.  I noticed in downloading my print that I lost some of the movement in the work that was available on Canva.  Like Google, this tool can be shared with a link, which I liked and also downloaded and attached.  I did both here to show the difference.

Link to canva: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFkk8OjfWY/AGRU_1L12QuXEDF7CfqLww/edit?utm_content=DAFkk8OjfWY&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

I explored the Padlet resources – I love the Liberatory Design process and paper proto typing to  build a game. I settle on the ADDIE design process and google slides – below. I am making a plan for how to improve the AI-powered classroom so that teachers can use it in Learning Lab next year. Lots of user experience things to work on before we add the computational thinking task.

Teaching with Grace Design Challenge

Rhonda

Hello,

It was really interesting to learn more about the design process!  I’ve very intrigued by speculative design and want to know more about how this type of design pushes complex ideas forward.  Reading that part made me think of Kurbrick’s 2001 and how when that movie was made in 1968 none of those technologies existed or even were in our collective imaginations (dreams maybe) – now they are realities!  I guess there are lots of great examples from science fiction of speculative design.  I, however, chose Design Thinking for Educators.  I appreciate the simplicity and could easily apply it to my work in student teaching seminar.  I chose to visually represent the process that (novice) student teachers engage in when they enter a new school for the first time as start learning and teaching.  I used Canva.  I love Canva!  It’s so easy to use and the designs are awesome.

While thinking through my personal design process and the design process I support my ECSE SPED teacher candidates in engaging in, I reflected on the mindsets discusses in the Design Thinking for Educators handbook.

The general process of problem solving seems obvious to many teacher candidates. However, the mindset and mental approach makes all the difference when analyzing the challenges, proposing solutions, and implementing change. The DTE Handbook highlights human-centered, collaborative, optimistic, and experimental approaches. Most importantly it empowers the agents of change (the students, educators, and community).

I built my design model around empowering students to be a part of the design and problem solving process.

Design Process

I’ve used Google Slides for years and have rarely used the feature for creating diagrams or charts. Limitations include only having 5 steps per diagram, though I just made a few quick changes to make my 10 step process.

In Learning Lab we have teacher candidates working with students in grades 6-12. This summer, Rhonda and I are looking to generate some activities that would be universally accessible, with frictionless entry to design and critical thinking, that will allow us to capture some aspects of problem solving and creativity as well as support teachers in feedback to encourage and shape curiosity and questioning.

I chose the Liberatory Design Framework and used Loopy (first time for me) to map out the simple framework.

I think this keep it simple design can assist in making tasks that work for students at many different entry points as we plan.

The only thing I’d say about Loopy that I didn’t like – because I am very visual and the dragging and shifting of objects to find the model that feels right was right up my alley – was the inability to format text in the label. Maybe I missed an option but it bothered me that I could not seem to adjust how the text looked on my visual.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fdONz43e5BqEHR3UAzF7UnmKnVPj1vJd/view?usp=sharing

Hello, this was such an exciting module! I wanted to use a design process similar to the one used by middle schoolers in the Vaccine Game, because the artifact I envision creating will have similar interactive features. I found that the Design for Thinking for Educators Toolkit was parallel to what was used in the design of that project. I utilized Loopy because I had never used it before and wanted to learn how to use a new tool. I found Loopy very easy to learn and interactive but a little limiting regarding the levels of connections one can create to illustrate systems. I would like it if I had more fonts and colors and, in general, more opportunities to label different parts of the graph.

As someone who uses graphics to conceptualize my thinking, Loopy is a great tool for simple charts. Here is my graph (I hope the link works!):

https://ncase.me/loopy/v1.1/?data=%5B%5B%5B1,585,129,1,%22Interpretation%22,4%5D,%5B2,686,413,1,%22Ideation%22,5%5D,%5B3,320,133,1,%22Discover%22,0%5D,%5B4,982,383,1,%22Program%252F%2520Systems%22,2%5D,%5B5,945,611,1,%22Curriculum%22,2%5D,%5B6,437,562,1,%22Experimentation%22,1%5D,%5B7,224,656,0.33,%22Prototype%25203%22,1%5D,%5B8,626,672,0.33,%22Prototype%25201%22,1%5D,%5B9,415,740,0.33,%22Prototype%25201%22,1%5D,%5B10,243,361,1,%22Evolution%22,5%5D%5D,%5B%5B1,2,89,1,0%5D,%5B3,1,33,1,0%5D,%5B5,4,-21,1,0%5D,%5B2,4,27,1,0%5D,%5B2,5,-108,1,0%5D,%5B2,6,9,1,0%5D,%5B10,2,99,1,0%5D,%5B4,2,36,1,0%5D,%5B5,2,56,1,0%5D,%5B6,8,10,1,0%5D,%5B8,9,21,1,0%5D,%5B9,7,16,1,0%5D,%5B7,10,36,1,0%5D%5D,%5B%5B519,25,%22What%2520skills%2520should%2520my%2520students%2520master%2520by%2520the%2520end%2520of%2520student%2520teaching%253F%22%5D%5D,12%5D

<p style=”font-weight: 400;”>For this project, I explored Design Thinking for Educators. Initially, I was going to use the steps in the process (Discovery, Interpretation, Ideation, Experimentation, and Evolution) to consider meal planning for my family for a week. After playing around with what that would look like, I started thinking about assignments in my literacy course that I might tinker with.
<p style=”font-weight: 400;”>I settled on using the Design Thinking framework to describe an assignment which involves selecting a culturally relevant book to read with a student, using a rubric to guide the process. I’ve been wanting to learn Canva so this was a perfect opportunity to get into it. I began looking for cycle templates to describe this process but couldn’t find anything that supported the amount of text I wanted to include. Kristen’s garden project inspired me to try the infographic templates instead. I liked how easy it was to start with an attractive template and to “re-mix” the design with new stickers and text. I spent entirely too much time tinkering on Canva, and it’s still not perfect, but here is the link to my project on selecting and reading culturally relevant text. It seems you have to be logged into Canva to view it.
<p style=”font-weight: 400;”>Link to Canva: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFlVxLt3hI/i-Nr0itKviK0-kCHvPIyOQ/edit?utm_content=DAFlVxLt3hI&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton