Lost in Thought

this was an interesting two marking periods. I learned a lot: about myself, the design process, our education system. We started the year with our classroom design, and honestly, I think I enjoyed that more than the second half of the year. It felt more structured, and we had an actual end goal and an actual deadline. There was constant feedback, and we were always working. We were able to change the design at least a few times a week, and we refined it as much as we could. And we were successful in the end, so that’s a plus. :)

The second half of the class was a lot more independent learning based. I worked with Irina and Rachel on COMMotion, but to be honest, I felt like I wasn’t doing much, and maybe I should’ve picked a different project but also helped Irina and Rachel. What ended up happening was Rachel helped a lot with the art stuff, and obviously Irina was running the whole thing. I dance, and I was dancing in an act, and I helped out when they needed me, but to be totally honest, there wasn’t much I could do. I ended up being the designated blog writer because the others were too busy to, understandably, and I cut out snowflakes. I really really enjoyed dancing in the showcase, but I was definitely more of a performer than anything else. 

I’m working with an organization called My Little Patient which is based in D.C. as a student intern. We’re working on organizing fundraisers for a ‘Kid Doctor’ Program which is a hygiene education program for students in third-world countries. Maybe working on that as my project would have been a more productive use of my time? I don’t know. I stuck with COMMotion because we’d already gotten so far, and I didn’t want to agree to work with them and then let them down.

(Reflection Week 6)

This week we broke into groups to address different issues involving the grant-writing process...and I was part of the graphic design group (which was ironic because I could make my self of use to every group except graphic design...that was honestly all Rachel)

Being the “Branding” group, we basically had to rebrand the class to truly represent what we do, which included renaming the class and coming up with a logo (which again, was all Rachel because we’re all shit at drawing except her....)

This was weirdly hard to do, because we do so much in the class, and we wanted to capture the design thinking mindset of the class but combine it with the creativity aspect and the fact that we actually build things and make a difference. We came up with a few names (some more slogans) and had the class vote...and that was definitely a waste of time.

See, here’s the thing with options. Once you force a solitary system on a large group and the group is either accustomed to it, comfortable with it, or just doesn’t give a damn, the collective is just too apathetic to bother with change. Why change something when it works fine?

 (obviously this isn’t accounting for whether it’s the most functional, but that’s the point) 

^^ (so this is how we did the voting...first we put up the goals we had in mind for what we wanted the names to convey [yes some of the names were us being stupid and half conscious, but I’ll get to that] and then we had a list of names which actually got a lot shorter. Mr. Heidt gave us ideas for a couple more that we added on there last minute...the irony is that it’s one of those names that got picked, not one of the ones we brainstormed XD)

As you can see, we added some new names and got rid of the stupid ones...and this is what we were left with...

When something works alright, no one cares enough to change it, and that’s what ended happening with the voting. No one is to blame, but we’re so used to calling the class Design Lab, that it stuck, and we ended up voing for that one XD 

Logos were a bit different though...we found some ideas online and we had a couple variations of them that Rachel drew...I’ll attach some of the ones that she sent me, but I think there were three total.

(super cool, isn’t it)

This voting was actually pretty useful because we didn’t already have a logo, so it was pretty unbiased and based on what people actually wanted...I don’t remember what we ended up picking but I swear I’ll talk about it in the next post :)

(Reflection Week 4)

Not too long ago, we, in groups, redesigned our Design Lab class....it’s also an English class though and so that was a conflict butttt...we made it work.

There were a lot of different ideas that were utilized and plenty that were trashed, and analyzing them made me feel like I was a scientist in a lab...which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s testing difference combinations until something clicks and we get the result we want.

For example,

 there were certain things that almost every group had:

foam cubes

actually I’m pretty sure every group had these - they were the most convenient seating, and easy to make...however, we may have all also used the foam cubes because Mr. Heidt told us that he really liked the concept of them and he explained to us how they worked. I feel like this gave us a bias in terms of seating because we already had that idea implanted into our heads...(just a thought)

writing surfaces

we all had some form of writing surfaces...primary chalkboards because color looks prettier against a black background honestly...XD They were in different forms though, my group in particular had a few chalkboards on wheels that we could move around the classroom to write on.

work tables

pretty much every group had work tables that were big enough to accommodate multiple students. These table would be useful for making prototypes as well as for just collaboration in English classes. When building our prototypes, we noticed a real lack of makerspaces, and it was really annoying (and difficult) to have to set up planks across desks to try and build on...

storage space

I know for a fact that every group had some mode of storage...we had an assortment of bookshelves or just shelves that held...well...stuff. We have a lot of stuff. Stuff for Heidt’s english classes, stuff for his D-Lab classes...and we need to organize it in a way that is cost effective as well as durable and efficient, and the easiest way to do that is just lots and lots of shelves.

comfy seating

with classes that are very individualized, there’s always time for people to sit and not only relax, but just do work in a comfortable manner. Right now, me and a few people just awkwardly assemble in the carpeted corner when we want to do work on the chromebooks, and it would be so much more convenient if there were couches or just comfy seating of some sort, like what we have in the library. It’s nice for (selective collaborating?)...basically working independently with technology but being able to collaborate and ask each other questions when needed.

creative lighting

okay this wasn’t in EVERY group’s presentation, but it was in a lot of them...warm lighting is something that just makes people more comfortable. As well as being functional, the room also needs to have character, and should obviously be welcoming. This can easily be done with some lighting that has warmer tones.

“Reflection Week 3)

i also hate interviews.

I’m not fond of a lot of things, I guess, but it’s not that, it’s the mindset that we can get an accurate sense of a person and their problems in five minutes and a shitstorm of questions. This week’s interviews seemed to be a bit different though.

We weren’t trying to skew the people being interviewed in a certain direction, we were simply trying to get them to talk. The questions ended up being more like, “Hi, how may we help you?” and then we let the people being interviewed rant for a while. This honestly made it A LOT easier on the interviewers because we didn’t have to ask too many questions, we just had to observe...this was the tricky part.

We weren’t just observing the answers of the person being interviewed, we were observing their every movement, their every thought, and their every feeling. We wanted to know exactly why they claimed what their problems were and how we could fix them. Sometimes when a person is speaking, the details don’t lie in their words, but rather in their actions. We need to take a look at their actions to see exactly what they mean by their words and we can answer the question, “Why?” I feel like we weren’t even wondering what their problems were, we were just concerned about why those problems existed.

Interestingly, enough, the answers we got were very similar to what we read about in those articles. Students want a way to be able to communicate with their peers, they like tight knit communities as classrooms, and they want to be able to do hands-on work in their classes. They want to be comfortable, they want to be able to transition between different modes of learning, and they want to be able to focus at certain times but also be creative when they need to be.

We put these all up on the board, and there were two lists...one that came from the teacher’s interview, and one from the students’ - 

(the students one is my handwriting) :)

and on the right we have a list of observations we made of other students in our other classes...

As you might see, we ended up having a lot of the same things being said over and over. This made it quite easy to condense into a “How Might We” statement, which we can constantly refer back to when we design our classroom.

“How might we create an environment where students can be motivated, creative, comfortable and communicative while being able to transition between different modes of learning in a way that makes them feel engaged?” -PG (that’s me! XD)

(Reflection Week 2)

I hate gray areas.

We’re designing a classroom and there are so many freaking gray areas...

This week we started reading up on different types of classrooms and tried to come up with a list of problems that we wanted to address in our classroom. The class was split up into two groups to read and analyze two different articles. Unfortunately, or fortunately I guess, I read the wrong article, and so I had to go back and read the right one...I guess this gave me a different perspective when coming up with my list. 

The articles talked about all sorts of innovative ideas for classrooms that actually took into account how students learn. Through autonomy, and an environment that fostered it. A place that could transition between lecture and hands-on activity, where students can put what they learn into practice, right there in the classroom. The ideas were brilliant, incorporating the short learning span of humans and their undying curiosity...HOWEVER

although this all sounds wonderful in theory, we have a budget and a certain amount of space and materials to work with.

This isn’t necessarily bad, it calls for more innovation and deeper thinking, it gives us everyday obstacles that we’re going to have to work around, but it does say a lot about gray areas. 

There is a point where being efficient is more important than being creative and extremely effective.

There is nothing we can do to get around this, we just need to accept it and find the point where we can be as effective as we can with the materials and tools that are given to us. I feel like this is going to be more of a challenge than actually coming up with the ideas.

now back to the class....

Experience

Details - noticing little specifics that alerted us of problems that may exist

Humor - we could do what we were supposed to do and still make it funny

Classroom - being told that we had to make it a form of education steered us more in that direction.

The thought of reflection...reflection makes people better learners (passage of reflection)

Understanding (Analysis)

The observations were notable because they helped us make our prototype more effective. We were able to use the little details that we noticed to come up with challenges that our characters might face, rather than using obvious clues. There’s more than what’s at the surface. We really wanted our character to be able to gain empathy because he is a leader, and a leader’s job is one that holds a huge responsibility, to lead themselves and others in the right direction. We still somehow managed to make it fun and crack jokes (and we had Adam so there’s that). The reflection tunnel also got me thinking though, because I feel like with reflection comes time to let things sink in, and that’s what our character would be able to do. Tying this into education made us think more down that alley and forced us to focus our thoughts on one problem, which may have made us better problem-solvers.

Imagining