Design Thinking with NoTosh - Tom Barrett

Children have a natural curiosity to take risks. Risk needs to be nurtured. When children ask questions, they are taking risks to externalise their thoughts.Teachers reaction to children’s questions is vital. Teachers need to value children's questions. The unanswerable questions are more valuable. Teachers being comfortable with questions you can't answer. Teachers need to challenge children with these type of questions. Sometimes children feel anxious about the unanswerable questions. As teachers we need to protect children's curiosity, not encourage it because it's already there. Resilience to curiosity.

Never stop questioning the world around you.

How the Power of Interest Drives Learning

Peninsula Park

I found this article 'How the Power of Interest Drives Learning' to be helpful when reflecting on the Design Thinking process. I found many links. The first statement, 'When we’re interested in what we’re learning, we pay closer attention; we process the information more efficiently; we employ more effective learning strategies, such as engaging in critical thinking, making connections between old and new knowledge, and attending to deep structure instead of surface features.' captures for me the immersion stage where students develop the skill of empathy and the synthesising stage where students make connections.

The second statement, 'Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham notes that teachers and parents are often “so eager to get to the answer that we do not devote sufficient time to developing the question.” Yet it’s the question that stimulates curiosity; being told an answer quells curiosity before it can even get going.' is the 'How might we...' questions needed to be given time to emerge. I think this is where Tom, you were saying that the pace needs to be slow when synthesising.

My favourite statement is 'scientists have shown that passionate interests can even allow people to overcome academic difficulties or perceptual disabilities.' Special Education needs to be on this bandwagon of Design Thinking at our schools!

4 C's & 3 R's

CHOICE

COLLABORATE

CURIOSITY

CHALLENGE

RESPONSIBILITY

REAL THING (authentic)

RESPECT(individuals)

Interview time in triads. Two interview and answer, third person records what is being said.

How might we better engage with our school community?

Using the hexagonal thinking tool to link ideas.

Language of inquiry

HOW MIGHT WE...? (Examples)

How might we timetable for incidental learning to happen?

How might we get to know our students or new students better in the first weeks of the school year to optimise student voice?

How might we generate student voice to encourage incidental learning?

How might we provide opportunities for teacher to share authentic learning?

How might we encourage students passions?

Then write 100 ideas in 10 minutes.

Decide out of all the 100 ideas which ones are your:

Darling? (love the most)

Safe boat?

Out there?

1.Pick one of these that you would like to trial.
2. Draw your ideas on how this will look on three post-it notes.
3. Pitch your idea to people around the room.

Expectations with each grade about the design thinking process will vary.

For kinder it could be just the students understanding that questioning the world is very important.

At the end of the session, a tool that is very helpful to receive feedback was writing on the FAIM:Design Thinking Communities.

2 Stars, a Wish and an Action

This was my feedback.

1st Star - To think that hexagons could help us question the world! The best quote of this experience was 'never stop questioning the world around you'. I thought going through the process with other educators was valuable if we want to have a better understanding of how we could implement the Design Thinking journey with our students.

2nd Star - To be able to reflect on how as a teacher, mother, auntie, friend, I have reacted to the questions children have asked me. To keep a book of questions, what a fabulous idea!

Wish - To communicate with other schools/teachers who are at different stages of the Design Thinking process.

Action - To support teachers in the Design Thinking process through the 3R's and 3C's when planning teaching and learning experiences.

DESIGN THINKING IMMERSION PLANNING TOOL

DESIGN THINKING OVERVIEW PLANNING TOOL

Please not that these are not Programs, they are useful tool to get you started on Design Thinking.

Immersion - Building a Learning Wall (Space)

Questions I might ask about Building a Learning Wall/Space

How is this display having an impact on the students learning?

What is the purpose of this space?

What does this classroom look like at their eye level?

Giving the students more ownership of this space.

Developmental display reflection of my learning. As we learn it begins to grow. Using the space a reminder or indication a physical invitation to learn and to take part and add their ideas to it. Teacher understands the purpose of this space. Messy learning wall.

Planning - A sense of where we might be going. A Fuzzy idea is OK. Authentic connection to the world around them.

REMEMBER, RECALL, RECOLLECT

Application stage to have assessment opportunities.
It should evolve as the students learning evolves.
DONE WALL - To celebrate what people have achieved.

SORT, GROUP, ORDER

Take the things off the wall and gather the things together. Group the ideas using the physical evidence.
Filter the mixer of their learning. Keep the remembering and recalling should continue and assessment is a great opportunity at this point.
Using hoops to categorise.

CONNECT, COMPARE, EXPLORE

How can we group this and ask students to justify why they made those connections.

Transfer the tangible objects that was used to make the thinking wall to refine and get rid of what is not needed

Connect a symbol - Words, symbols, pictures to ask students to express how they feel about these things to what is happening. Link to the language outcomes.

Humour can be linked to inferencing and making connections.

Looking for things that have tension. What is the difference between ideas.

Give a title for this grouping or connection.

Narrative to connect things - Use Story Wheel App

Be in tune with what the discussions are at this stage because they might express what they are interested in, to pursue with inquiry (example of the canteen problem)

PURGE, ELIMINATE, STRUCTURE (HEXAGONAL TASK)

Hexagonal task allows you to use it as a summative assessment. What students have learnt. To see where the students are at.
Large copy to connect characters in a narrative. Linking to narrative using the characters, scene, objects, plots, emotions, themes, a combinations of words and pictures in the story to make the links.
Decide what we want to focus on and we add structure to this latter part of learning.
Allows students to visually how things are related to each other.

Helps students to see the links. How do we as teachers capture the spoken dialogue that happens when they explain why students have put the things go together? (Put hex together on a whiteboard and write the links)

Students can put their ideas on the hexagon and then justify their links OR teachers put ideas on hexagons and ask students to put these things
Conversation with students is very important. Justification of how they make the connections. High order thinking.
This has been a challenge. How does one record the rich conversions and dialogue that happens when students are justifying their reasons for connections.

FOCUS, CONNECT, CONVERGE

Students being able to articulate their meta-cognition. Being able to explain where they are at with their learning and them knowing where they need next to extend their learning. To bridge the gap between where they are in their learning and where they need to go.

If students come up to what they want to pursue make sure it is an authentic goal, don’t just jump into anything they come up with. Don’t loose sight of ongoing assessment Summative.

SOLO (Structure Of Learning Outcomes)

Structure linked to hexagonal thinking.

Click here for more on SOLO Taxonomy

SOLO Taxonomy Playlist - YouTube

To look in depth about an object - attributes. Examples: pen, staff meeting, cake
Attribute listing analysis Morphological Changed Forced

Only works with a solution. Redesigning, challenging the world around us.
How can we change … for someone …. To empathise with someone to validate their ideas.

Draw and talk about their ideas on post it notes. Quick process.

100 ideas is a forced strategies as well. Forcing students to come up with ideas, you need to think about changing the pace of their ideas coming forward. Their idea incubates for a period of time. You need to draw onto these ideas as they go on this journey of design thinking.

Have a balance of the pace we expect the students to come up with their ideas.

Great ideas sometimes come about when you are not thinking about the problem.

Eleanor Duckworth- Confusion, Play and Postponing Certainty

Putting learners directly in touch with their subject matter, whereby the subject matter becomes the authority. It's NOT with words about the subject matter, it's not just mediating between the subject matter and learners, its not a matter of telling them how to think about it. The teacher should be connecting the learner to the subject matter itself. Having faith in the subject matter and faith of the students minds. Students becoming engrossed in learning!

Bug bank - quick fixes around the school.

To be able to critique something you have to share your prototype for others to give feedback.
To build the language skills for students to communicate their ideas.
Finding a problem that is real life
Link Government unit to ask leadership team to change real life experiences within their community. (supports design thinking)
Know your students where their motivations are.
Space can constrain and open up inquiry.
Immersion
Looking at UbD

How do you capture the conversions with kids?
How do you assess in the early years?
How do students reflect?

How We Learn What We Learn http://issuu.com/rosendale/docs/how_we_learn

The Six A's ofDesigning Projects

Excerpted fromAdria Steinberg, Real Learning, Real Work,Routledge, New York, 1997Order from Amazon.com

Authenticity Academic Rigor Applied Learning

Active Exploration Adult Relationships Assessment

Authenticity		Does the project emanate from a problem that has meaning to the student? Is it a problem or question that might actually be tackled by an adult at work or in the community? Do students create or produce something that has personal and/or social value, beyond the school setting?
Academic Rigor		Does the project lead students to acquire and apply knowledge central to one or more discipline or content areas? Does it challenge students to use methods of inquiry central to one or more disciplines? (e.g., to think like a scientist) Do students develop higher order thinking skills and habits of mind? (e.g., searching for evidence, taking different perspectives)?
Applied Learning		Does the learning take place in the context of a semi-structured problem, grounded in life and work in the world beyond school? Does the project lead students to acquire and use competencies expected in high performance work organizations (e.g., teamwork, appropriate use of technology, problem solving and communication)? Does the work require students to develop organizational and self-management skills?
Active Exploration		Do students spend significant amounts of time doing field-based work? Does the project require students to engage in real investigations, using a variety of methods, media, and sources? Are students expected to communicate what they are learning through presentation and/or performance?
Adult Relationships		Do students meet and observe adults with relevant expertise and experience? Do students have an opportunity to work closely with at least one adult? Do adults collaborate on the design and assessment of student work?
Assessment		Do students reflect regularly on their learning using clear project criteria that they have helped to set? Do adults from outside the classroom help students develop a sense of real world standards for this type of work? Will there be opportunities for regular assessment of student work through a range of methods, including exhibitions and portfolios.