4 C's of the 21st Century Learning: A creative way to help generate a baseline idea of what communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity are and their importance in 21st century learning.
Part 1- Experimentation Summary:
Phase 4, the Experimentation phase of the design thinking project was possibly the most challenging for me just because of the time and demands of this project and closing out the school year at work. It was very difficult to juggle the demands but my team picked up the slack and made it extremely to contribute and understand the direction we were taking on the experimentation phase. Thank you Jake, Kristin and Candace. Continuing our preferred methods of communication, we utilized emails, shared google documents, google hangouts/chats and blackboard. We began by creating the checklist on a shared google document and we discussed our next steps. Then we revisited our focus question: How might we provide English Language Learners with the supports they need to maximize their academic growth toward meeting and/or exceeding the SBAC standards for ELA and Math, as well as EL reclassification? We talked about our end users, teachers of ELL’s and we can create something that goes beyond the routine strategies in the classroom. We decided to create an opportunity that will extended learning and followed-up monthly through ELL parent nights, hosted by teachers and ELAC parents. We then synthesized the experimentation phase and decided how we would format these ELL nights. At these nights, groups will be formed with parents, students and the host teachers, broken down by ELL level. Each group will rotate within un-conferenced breakout rooms in a “World Cafe” setting, receiving resources and modeled ELD strategies (from students and teachers) along the way. Field trips (both physical and virtual) will be incorporated to allow for authentic language immersion, as well as opportunities to showcase learning and ask more questions. Our goal is to develop a community-wide program which empowers parents and “ELLevates” students toward improved academic achievement through teacher led and data-based learning sessions. Our prototype emerged from this discussion and the ideas that were discussed. We then began creating a shared document through google slides to organize our phase. We then published our prototype onto the google+ community for our cohort, created google form that was organized to receive feedback on our prototype. Once the feedback was received, we organized it on a google sheet. Then we collaborated on google hangouts and began synthesizing the feedback and we responded to it together by typing it onto the google slides. Much of the feedback was extremely positive because most felt ELL students and their families have been overlooked and that we had great ideas to engage families, make them part of the education process and for them to feel valued. I would implement the process of collaboration that we utilized during this phase and in the creation of our prototype with my students as it fosters 21st century skills of collaboration. Besides teaching students how to work in groups, I would emphasize the importance of working effectively and respectfully with diverse groups which is challenging task for my second graders. The willingness to be flexible and helpful to reach a common goal and share the responsibility of the collaboration and accomplishment. This process would not differ if we implemented it with actual end users as we created the prototype with end users in mind and we selected colleagues and future leaders of our cohort to give us their experienced feedback. This week my team and I collaborated on the Ideation Phase of our Design Thinking project. We continued to communicate through google chat and virtual face-to-face meetings through google hangouts. We began by creating a shared google document that included the Ideation Phase checklist and part 1 consisted of brainstorming or generating ideas about our focus question: How might we provide English Language Learners with the supports they need to maximize their academic growth toward meeting and/or exceeding the SBAC standards for ELA and Math, as well as EL reclassification? Our guiding question lead us to the 100 Idea Challenge part of our project where we first created the norms for brainstorming and generating ideas. We felt the Brainstorming Rules provided on Blackboard were great norms to follow while we work on this module:
The Ideation phase was a great experience because it opened up the lane of creativity. Since our guiding question is about EL students and parents, when I began thinking about strategies they tended to be the normal everyday strategies. Through collaborating with my teammates and reading their ideas, I began generating better and more creative ideas myself. This phase also brought to the surface the importance of teamwork and collaboration, to listen to the different perspectives and experience from the group. From conservative to wild ideas, we were able to come to a consensus and reminded each other about keeping the end users in mind. Part 3 of the phase consisted of collaborating live through google hangouts and creating a Coggle to organize our promising ideas: inspiring ideas, rational ideas, darling ideas, long shot ideas, and most likely to delight the end users ideas. After adding our promising ideas, we identified the possible oppositions, the funding that will cover the cost, the real value of the end user, time constraints, the cost, and the experts needed. This week's biggest challenge was finding the time to collaborate as a complete team in such a short week. We had class on Wednesday night and the entire phase was due by Sunday. This only gave us 4 days to complete the assignment. This was difficult due to our busy schedules with end of the year teaching responsibilities. We were not able to collaborate until Friday night, then we planned to collaborate again on Saturday night but I was not able to make it due to a family commitment. We then collaborated on Sunday evening but one of our teammates was not able to be there due to other commitments as well. This was also in the midst of completing our own reflection for this phase as well. It was a tough balance but we persevered through it and found a way to get it done through great teamwork and keeping me updated with the process even on the day I was not able to attend our collaboration meeting. The web 2.0 tools and the flexibility of everyone made this a much easier process. The ideation phase can also be applied to the classroom or with staff because the phase implements the collaboration process. The phase moves us from the traditional position of isolation to one of collaboration, reflective dialogue amongst teachers and leaders and a collaborative focus on student (end users) learning. We can use the ideation phase to collaborate to solve PLC issues, student behavior management or during decisions such as common assessments during our grade level meetings. Students can use in the classroom to develop their creative and critical thinking skills to solve a real problem through collaboration, experimentation and play. According to Tim Brown in his Ted Talk titled Tales of Creativity and Play, he stated that as children, we engage in exploratory play. Free from the reins of experience and social norms, we look to discover how things work. This idea is the core of Design Thinking, therefore adults that wish to be creative need to have a space to do so as there are numerous companies like Pixar and google, education should provide the same. Resource: Brown,T. [Ted]. (2008) Tales of creativity and play. [video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjwUn-aA0VY on June12, 2016. A. Greeting Home Welcome to _____________________! I am extremely blessed and grateful to be joining your school community as the new principal of ______________ school. I am excited to be a part of a school culture that is dedicated to student learning, innovation, collaboration and creativity. I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself, I was born in Chula Vista, CA, I currently reside in Bonita, CA with my wife and have worked for the Lakeside School District for 6 years. I have taught 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade and I am so grateful for every experience I had with my students. B. Goals of Critical Thinking Tenets & Technology Use Ours goals are to provide learning opportunities which require high levels of critical thinking skills and reasoning accompanied by application of learning in a real world community purpose. Our technology goals are to ensure our teachers and students are not only equipped to teach 21st century skills, but to utilize them effectively for the purpose of student achievement. C. At least 8 Guidelines for digital citizenship your school values In addition to equipping and empowering our students with technology, we will also empower our students by giving them the fundamental lessons in digital citizenship. All digital citizens will:
D. Three Websites or Resources for Parents to access: I am looking forward to a great and successful year! Continue to stay involved, communicate with your child’s teacher, counselor, or administrator for any assistance you may need during the school year. Stay tuned to any upcoming email blasts and call-outs notifying you about any upcoming events and opportunities for participation. Jaime Gonzalez Principal This week my teammates and I worked on the Interpretation Phase of our Design Thinking project. In the midst of the end of the year teaching demands, our virtual classes for 655 and 640, and our personal lives, it was such a blessing that we had the ability to communicate through google chat, google hangouts (virtual meetings) and emails. Initially, we created a Padlet to gather our survey questions, results and perspectives but we decided to switch to Linoit as it was more efficient and it provided color coding possibilities that Padlet could not. We began adding all of the responses to Padlet then to Linoit, we didn’t sort any of them at this phase, we were simply adding them to the board to sort out during part 2 of the interpretation phase.
Part 2 of the interpretation phase, we were instructed to find the meaning behind all of the responses we received from our end users. On the Linoit document, we began collaborating and sorting as categories emerged. This web 2.0 tool gave us the ability to sort and collaborate in real time and I was able to observe my teammates create and add their contribution simultaneously. Through our collaboration and the analyzing of the EL data from our end users, we noticed there were the following concerns: academic growth, language barriers, school values, challenges in and outside the school and ELD supports for teachers. We also noticed that there was a negative tone or perspective from our end users, especially the parents. Many parents did not feel valued on campus or believed their children were not receiving the quality education they should be receiving. In other words, they have not been pleased with the support and the end results on a year to year basis. One of the parents also indicated the statement, “I know we’re invading your country but..,” the word “invading” absolutely shocked me that a parent on a certain campus has a feeling that she and her children are invading our country and campus. It’s an outsider perspective that needs to be adjusted to reflect an inclusion mindset and it starts with leadership. During part 3 of the interpretation phase, we created a google slides presentation where we were to present inspiring stories from the data collected. We began transferring the information we collected and also added visuals for the purpose of creating a summary of the story that was created from our findings. My individual contribution this week was creating a shared checklist of the interpretation phase through google docs so all of us teammates can access it and refer to it frequently. The original checklist was a PDF creating as a google doc allows to modify and communicate through the document and throughout the process. As we began receiving responses to our surveys, we all began adding them to Padlet, as we were doing this I began cleaning it up and organizing them based on the category each question fit into, this made it easier to follow and understand. Then, as we began using Padlet, we decided that it did not meet our needs in regards to creating a document that was easy to sort by color so we switched to Linoit. As we switched, I assisted in moving over the data and sorting it by colors. White post-its represented themes that have emerged, yellow represents personal finding and anecdotes, and blue represented questions from findings (QFT). This lead to another individual contribution, the Questions Formulation Technique (QFT), which is a process that facilitates the process of asking rigorous questions that includes the following steps: 1. A Question Focus (QFocus), 2. The Rules for Producing Questions, 3. Producing Questions, 4. Categorizing Questions, 5. Prioritizing Questions and 6. Next Steps. Then, during part 3 of the interpretation phase, I began creating slides to our google slides presentation. I created a visual of our Design Thinking Question that guided our surveys, I added information we collected from part 1 and part 2 of the interpretation phase. Some of the challenges we encountered we the difficulty of understanding the checklist initially, time and fatigue due to the demands of the end of the year teaching schedule, the amount of work from all 3 classes that are currently in progress, and the switching of the web 2.0 tools in the beginning of our interpretation phase as it did not meet our needs. I would apply this process with students during our writing block. Writing is one of the most difficult subjects to teach, according to many teachers I have spoken with and heard. It’s a long process, especially for second graders but I love the web 2.0 tool Linoit as it allows students to create a visual of their thoughts and findings and later collaborate to group them together based on their similarities. We have also used this process during our Next Generation Science Standards training's prior to developing lessons. We used post-its write down our thoughts, post all of them on a board and then collaborated to group and organize them based on the categories they fi. Creating a visual of this process makes the process more efficient. In this process, several tenets of critical thinking were evident and necessary. When going through the interviews with the teachers and students, it was important for me to have an open mind and just listen to the concerns. This also means that I had to defer judgement and not offer advice or input as I collected the information. As a teacher, I think this is a hard thing to do, especially when you see colleagues expressing frustration and concern. Empathy and humility is also very important in this phase. Parents and students share some very private information and some may even feel embarrassed to admit that they do not have access to the internet or to a computer (or other device) or even trouble understanding the homework because of language barriers. It is important to approach these conversations with respect and ready to just listen and observe. When we approach these questions in this manner it builds a trusting relationship with the end users and hopefully a better solution will come of it. Emily Pilloton's Project in Bertie County adds to my knowledge about the DT process and inspires my next steps because the story she tells about public education reminds me of the school I currently work for, there are some strong similarities. One of the differences of Bertie County and my current site is that we are aligned with 21st century learning and the necessary technology, however most of the homes surrounding our site are not. I love the the humanitarian focus of the design process as it is about designing “with” people and simply “for” people. This allows the end users to be a part of the process and allows the appropriate solutions to naturally emerge from within. The first step is to identify the need or opportunity and design within the public education system to give a fresh perspective to make education a great vehicle for community development. Below are the 3 parts of the design thinking process for education that helped me truly understand the DT process at a deeper level:
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