New semester and courses start with a design sprint

I am mid-way through my second year at my current school and have begun a new collaborative partnership with a colleague with whom I haven't yet had an opportunity to work. She teaches two sections of Sociology. The students in the classes are all seniors and the semester is a bit abbreviated since they will be going on internships for the last month of school. We have met a couple of times to discuss the challenges she is confronting:

• second semester seniors can be an engagement challenge
• contentious civic climate means some of the course topics are challenging to discuss
• teaching the same course for the sixth semester in a row means she is challenged to keep it fresh and relevant

This partnership is going to be exciting. My colleague is my pedagogical soul mate. She thinks 10X about any curricular idea. She is a model of risk-taking in the classroom. Failure is always forward so it isn't really failure at all. Given these habits of mind, we started with a blank slate and this question:

How might we disrupt senior-itis and

ignite students' passion for working on solutions to social issues?

Where do we start when we have a blank slate?

We began with our general musings about how to personalize this study, how to help students wrap their heads around the macro and micro views of sociology. Addiction is an issue that lends itself to sociological study on a macro level and juuling at our school is a micro view. Gender is a macro topic; professional training of our teachers around issues of gender identity in the classroom is more micro. The more we talked, the more it became clear that the students are going to have autonomy over their focus for the semester and their purpose was going to be to apply their skills to solving a community problem. The question was: How?

Embracing the principles of Universal Design for Learning we considered how to remove barriers to:

• student engagement
• content access
• expressions of learning

We discussed how to promote divergent and convergent thinking processes to encourage students to think of societal issues in both macro and micro ways and invite them to see connections between the different topics.

We continued brainstorming. What if we present them with an artifact (inspired by the Q-focus from the Right Question Institute's QFT protocol documented in Make Just One Change) and have them list on one side of the artifact all of the macro issues related to it, and on the other side list all the micro issues indicated by it. Then we thought about showing them these two videos for the purpose of macro-micro comparisons:

Dove's ad about beauty standards and young girls:

Greenpeace's response:

Enter Design Thinking

But here's the rub. These students don't have experience really owning their learning. They have had choice, as in make this product or that product, but they haven't had complete autonomy. Realizing that we were already flexing our design thinking muscles trying to empathize with this group of students and design an approach to the course that would meet their needs, we decided that we needed to guide them through this same process so each student could meaningfully chart his/her/their own path through the curriculum.

To figure out what this would look like, we turned to the Future Design School app which has a Design Thinking for High School Students curriculum. Everything my colleague needs to confidently facilitate her classes adopting the mindset of innovators and successfully navigate this personalized experience is included. They will identify macro societal problems, focus them to the micro school or community level, and then engage in the necessary work of empathizing with their peers and fellow community members to research, design, test and iterate the best possible solution to these shared problems.

The Design Sprint

Because we were concerned about student buy-in we thought it would help the students if they knew where this was all going, as in what does "the design process" mean soup-to-nuts? what are we in for? To that end, we decided to do a design sprint with them: the whole process in 45 minutes. Drawing on my experience at the Google Certified Innovator Academy, we decided to have one class design a chair and the other design a wallet. In each class, I was the stakeholder; the students were all designing to meet my needs. In each class I stood in the center of the room and told a story. To one class I told the story of traveling 10 years ago and being pick-pocketed and needing to replace my wallet. Now that wallet was wearing out, and my wallet needs had changed dramatically. The class began peppering me with questions about my shopping habits, about my phone, about my acceptance of or aversion to change (the state of being, not the coins -- we had to clarify), about my likes and dislikes, about how my life has changed over the last ten years. In the other class I told a tale of whoa about aging, body breakdown and injuries and the impact all that has on sitting. Again they questioned me and asked about reading and computer habits and other lifestyle habits.

After these intense Q&A sessions, the students were each given the following materials:

• one piece of 8.5x11 scrap paper
• one piece (roughly the same size) of aluminum foil
• a single pipe cleaner
• a piece of wire-edged ribbon about six inches long

They were given five minutes to build the perfect wallet or chair to suit my needs. At the end of five minutes each student paired with a student across the room. They were each given 30 seconds to pitch their design to their partner. At the end of a minute, they chose which of their two designs was best, set the other aside and became a team pitching the winning chair to another newly-formed team. We continued the process of pitch, choose, set aside, merge and re-pitch until they were down to two designs. They then pitched to me. I critiqued each design and then chose the one that best met my needs.

Reflection on the Sprint

My colleague and I then guided a reflective discussion about the process. The students acknowledged some important elements of the design process.

Empathy: they all realized that they were intently focused on me the whole time. When they pitched it was about being best at meeting my needs. They never judged me or disregarded something I said and they never presumed to know me better than I know myself and my needs.

Collaboration: each time they re-grouped their pitch improved when new voices helped explain the product. And when I was critiquing prototypes at the end, they realized that most of the features I wanted were in some design somewhere in the room. If they worked together they could have combined those features into the best possible design.

Iteration: without either of us saying anything, both classes said they could make a new design where they could combine their best ideas into one chair (or wallet), maybe use better materials and test it again. And they also realized that talking to me with a prototype in their hand elicited important insight into my needs and how to satisfy them. They wanted more information. They were designing with me.

Going Forward

We are excited about the next steps: helping students identify a societal issue that authentically concerns and engages them and begin the process of defining that problem and finding the stakeholders who experience it. Design thinking as pedagogy is the most empowering approach I have experienced in 26 years teaching.

Students solving problems of social media, part 3

FutureDesignSchool.com

Thanks for following this design thinking journey!

In case you missed parts one or two, my students are tackling problems they have identified with social media while preserving the benefits they experience from engaging in those platforms. We replicated a social media dialogue during the problem definition and ideation phases. Blog posts about parts one and two explore these processes in detail.

Now, the students have completed their prototypes and are seeking user feedback. The students had a few options for how to proceed with building their prototype. They could use cardboard and other basic supplies from our makerspace to build a 3D object. They could use paper templates to design or redesign and app. Or, they could storyboard the experience of their solution in action by drawing the sequences on post-its and creating a short video. I used the slides inserted below to show models of what they were doing and facilitate discussion of the prototyping process.



Here are some of the prototypes in the process of being built.

Now that they have finished building their prototypes, it is time for user testing! The students met one-on-one with members of our school community to watch how those people interacted with their prototypes, and they were able to interview those users about their reactions to the proposed solution both in terms of the viability of the concept and its appeal.

In order to solicit a broader spectrum of perspectives, each of the students uploaded their design to a Google Form which they used to ask key questions about their design. Then I added each Form to a Padlet that indexes each of their "How might we..." questions with their Google Form for collecting feedback. The students and I shared the padlet through our social media networks in order to reach a wider audience of social media users and increase the perspectives provided in the feedback. We welcome any comments you would like to offer about the viability and appeal of their designs. You can visit the padlet (also embedded below), and please feel free to share with your students and encourage them to provide feedback as well! Thank you!

Solving the Problems of Social Media, Part 1

This week we began a new unit in the Digital Literacy class that I am teaching; I called the unit, "Social: the new media". I curated a playlist of videos on YouTube for creating flipped lessons and giving students opportunities to explore sub-topics of interest to them. I consulted the lessons and ideas published by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), Google's Applied Digital Skills, and the Sift from the News Literacy Project. Clearly I had lots of stuff I could ask the students to do, but I was owning it and that didn't feel right.

So I put everything to the side, cleared off my desk, and got blank paper and some sharpies. I started to think about problems with social media. Not because I want to make a case for my students that social media is rotting their brains and they need to do something healthier with their time. Frankly, that would be quite hypocritical of me! Instead, we are setting out to solve the problems. To the right is my lesson plan for the first two days.

Here is how it worked in practice.

First, I covered tables with paper, piled a bunch of sharpies and markers in the middle, and let each student claim a spot as s/he arrived. In the center of each table I had written this:

The lesson on the first day unfolded in four phases.

Phase 1: Defining

Round 1: write your definition of social media on the table where you are sitting.

Round 2: rotate clockwise, read what you find, and add to or amend it. Do not cross out or cover anything you find.

Phase 2: Pros

Round 3: rotate again, read what you find, make a list of the "pros" of social media. What are the benefits?

Round 4a: rotate, and, once again, read what you find and add to the list without covering or removing anything you find already there.

Phase 3: Cons

Round 4b: now start a list of "cons" when you think about social media. What are the drawbacks or detriments?

Round 5: rotate one last time, and now you are back where you started. Read what you find. Add anything you want. And then, circle the pro that matters most to you and the con that most bothers you.

Before moving to the next phase we discussed the process we had just used and how it mimics social media posting and commenting. We considered why I asked them to only respond to previous comments and be sure to not write over or cross any out. We also talked about how or whether they filtered what they wrote because it was on the table where I could see it and it felt "permanent" doing it with Sharpies. A little nod to digital citizenship.

Phase 4: How Might We

Round 6: Write your "how might we" question. How might we preserve (your pro) while fixing (your con)?

Here is what a table looked like at the end of the lesson:

And here are some of their How Might We questions:

• HMW preserve a way to connect and share ideas while fixing a false sense of success?
• HMW preserve the connection between others while fixing the distribution of hate?
• HMW preserve the freedom of being able to share what we want and being able to connect with others while fixing the consumption of time it takes?
• HMW preserve social media's ability to connect us with varied communities while fixing the way it encourages dangerous comparisons?
• HMW preserve connecting with friends while fixing the spreading of hate and false information?

Day 2 was all about growing empathy with social media users other than ourselves. The students started this process by thinking about someone they know who has experienced the social media problem they are addressing. They listed all they know about that person: what they do, what they say about themselves and about social media, etc. Then, they wrote three open-ended questions they could ask that person to learn more about that person's experiences with social media. And then they conducted interviews. Some students called people on the phone and discussed their topic that way while taking notes on what their subject said. Others went to other parts of the school to find people. Others sent emails.

At the end of the class, they all came back to our classroom to review their interview notes. They highlighted anything that their subject(s) said that was interesting, enlightening or new information that they didn't already know about the person.

Later this week, they will refine their HMW questions to more accurately reflect the needs of the people they interviewed and we will begin the ideation process. Stay tuned to learn about the brainstorming techniques we use and the ideas that the students will begin to prototype.

Remember all of the resources that I collected in preparation for teaching this unit? They now will become relevant as the students begin to research possible solutions to the problem they are tackling and they will have a vested interest in reading, watching, and unpacking the resources I curated for them. This learning process, over which the students have agency, is much more meaningful and empowering than any teacher-directed instruction I could have created. I can't wait to see what they create!

Here is Part 2: Ideation

Empowered by design thinking

As the new school year begins, I have a concern. I am not concerned about the new course I am teaching or the new students I will soon meet. I am not concerned about inclement weather and the forecast for a snowy winter interfering with our learning mojo.

I’m concerned about buzzwords.

More specifically, I am concerned that a tenet of learning, a foundational principle for how I understand my role as an educator, will be reduced to a buzzword. What is that word?

Design Thinking.

OK, that is two words. And those two words represent the mindset from which I approach planning, collaborating, teaching, relationship-building, and my ongoing learning. Being an educator with this mindset helps me embrace and empower what I value most in my colleagues, students, and myself: creative possibilities.

When I was a social studies teacher working with students in an American Government course we would discuss what makes us human. As we set about to examine how and why the founding generation established our systems of government, we wondered: what sets us apart from the kingdom of animals co-existing in prides, packs, gaggles, herds or any other animal collective? Students had all sorts of thoughts about what makes us human, what defines our humanity. Some of those ideas were dark, like cruelty. But most were breathtakingly optimistic.

To be human, they decided, was to be curious. Not the kind of curiosity that killed the cat. Instead, unbridled wonderment. To be human is to have an imaginative capacity that inspires others to join together in pursuit of ambitious quests, to persevere against odds and obstacles, to new frontiers of exploration, discovery, and action. Why do humans do this? Because as we benefit from the very nature of those who preceded us, we are bound to serve a greater good, to meet challenges with solutions, to make a bright future for those who come next.

And that, in a nutshell, is design thinking. Design thinkers see problems as opportunities. Constraints only fuel more unusual and untried solutions. Design thinkers have empathy for the many different points of view surrounding the problem they are trying to solve. They design, prototype, and redesign to create a more perfect solution, to improve the lives of people in their schools and communities small and large.

The best part of design thinking is that anyone can do it. Anyone.

Building this capacity in ourselves, in our colleagues, and in our students is an essential component of future-ready skill development. When Google plans for the evolution of its products and the development of new ones, they think about and empathize with what they call “the next billion users”. They aren’t planning for now, they are planning for a future they can only imagine. Consider, for a moment, who those next billion users are and what their experiences have been. Think, for example, about vocabulary we use for which they have no context, words that are meaningless to them. Words like: clockwise, desktop computer, MP3 player, pay phone, gasoline-powered engine, and more. How is their navigation of the world via a handheld device that gives them access to all the world’s information, organized and made useful, an essential component to how they will learn, communicate, and contribute?

Now consider the issues and challenges that face the next billion users’ local and global communities. As their educators, we have accepted the challenge of equipping them with the skills and habits of mind they will need to jump into the void and tackle those challenges. They will suffer defeat. Some of their setbacks will be heartbreaking. And they will be resilient. They will persevere in tearing down obstacles. They will push limits and defy odds. They have no choice. The world needs them.

Remember the best part of design thinking? Anyone can do it. I was so fortunate to take a deep dive into the processes of discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, and evolution that underpin the design thinking process when I worked with and learned from the Future Design School at the Google Innovator Academy. Learning to think this way, to fall in love with problems and see every challenge as an opportunity, and then to apply my energy to the steps inherent in designing solutions has transformed how I work with students and my colleagues from how I plan lessons to how I facilitate meetings and write curriculum.

In fact, one of the latest resources created by the Future Design School is a curriculum series for elementary, middle, and upper grades. The grade specific, modular programs are mapped to relevant standards and can be implemented across disciplines; the carefully crafted curricula keep student interests at the forefront. Each course contains: videos, assessment, slide decks, a robust, teacher's guide, handouts to deliver exceptional learning experiences for all students. They are a tremendously supportive resource for educators experienced in design thinking and those just getting started with this approach. Create a classroom culture that empowers students to solve-real world problems!

What will you empower your students to do?