Design Thinking: Who

Our next Design Thinking session was called 'Who'. We had to create a 'Who' poster where we identified the people that could help us with our projects. My poster is attached below.  

The different colours within the poster represent the process of our thinking. Written in black - this is where I started. I identified the people close to me that could help me with my project, these people ranged from my colleagues at school and the individual skills they could help me with, to my learners and further to my fellow MIT colleagues. These people are all very close to me and will be a big part of my project. 

As my thinking developed as did the possibilities. Written in yellow are the people one step further. These are the people that are not within my immediate life - but people that I could possibly get in touch with to further help my project. One thing to note here, was that a few of these people have been crossed off - we had to take away at least one person, to limit our people down and think critically about who could provide the best help. 

The final writing in blue represents our big picture thinking. Out of anyone in the world - Who would I want to help with me project? I chose a range of people - ranging from educators i find inspiring, to maths guru's, to google employees to Albert Einstein.... The people I chose in this category inspire me a lot within my teaching and I would love to get their perspective on my identified challenge.  

Design Thinking: Interpretation

Our next exercise was to dive deeper into everyones challenges and ask the following question 'How might we turn this problem into an Opportunity' . On post it notes, everyone went around each others challenges and asked a 'How might we....' question to try and stimulate some thinking around how we can get the most out of this challenge. 

Some of the 'How might we' questions that really resonated with me were as follows;

• HMW look at patterns and collective gaps leading up to Yr 7/8 to better target the problem later on.
• HMW address this as a wide or whole school approach - could intervention be made earlier (before Yr 7/8) or could consistent strategies be used across years?

Design Thinking: Discovery

Our second session of our Design Thinking was called 'Discovery'. In this session we went through a role play activity at the fictional 'Kuaotunu area school'. 

The context for this session was a teacher/parent information session, where the Principal was reporting to the parents some of the issues at the school. We were all given a role to play for the session, these roles ranged from a parent who was a lawyer to the local plumber. The Principal reported the school's issues (our identified challenges) and within our roles we had to question these challenges and talk through why they were a potential problem. 

This was a great session as it helped to show and clarify to others what our challenge is and why it is a challenge. It was great to get the perspectives from the other teachers in the room - especially in their role playing character. I think it highlighted to me, that this is an issue among our students and there are so many possible reasons as to why this has occurred, but also so many possibilities to remedy it. The perspectives of my other MIT colleagues helped me to see that. 

I am looking forward to seeing where this challenge will go - especially with the help of my other MIT colleagues. 

Design Thinking: Empathy

In our Empathy Design Thinking session, we were buddied up with another MIT teacher. We had to perform a role play where one person took on the role as the teacher and the other as the student. 

We used our question/problem as the context for the role play. The idea of the role play was to demonstrate the challenges that our learners face when confronted with the problem we have identified. In my case my learner was struggling to solve a maths strategy due to their limited maths knowledge (times tables). 

This session helped to clarify my problem in the eyes of others as it identified the real challenges our learners face in the classroom. It showed my other MIT colleagues how this problem is an issue and the barrier it is to students academic progress. I think it highlighted to others why and how this is such a problem in the classroom. It was great to role play it out - it made the problem 'come to life'. 

                             

Below is a poster I have created, this shows the problem from the perspective of the learner. It identifies the following in the context of my challenge;

• What do my learners do when faced with the challenge?
• What do my learners think?
• What do my learners say?
• How do my learners feel?

MIT Hui

Last Thursday through to Saturday we headed to Kuaotunu in the Coromandel for our first MIT 2021 (Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) Hui. 

This Hui was the first time all for us MIT2021 teachers to meet each other. There are seven teachers from a range schools across New Zealand. It was great to talk to all the other teachers and discuss their proposal ideas. 

The purpose of this Hui was around team building with our other MIT2021 colleagues and to start our design thinking process around our proposals.

Design thinking...

"is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for ... success.” 

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO. 

Within our design thinking  there was a range of tasks we engaged in labeled; 'Discovery', 'Empathy', 'Interpretation' and 'Who'. I will elaborate and discuss these in more depth in subsequent blog posts. 

It was great to meet with the other teachers and find out more about their initial proposal ideas, I'm looking forward to working with everyone throughout the year and to see where each person's project takes them. 

MIT Moonshot Proposal - 5 Why's

Our first step in our MIT Design Thinking journey was to create our 'Moonshot Proposal'. For this task we had to; identify a challenge impacting achievement among our students, provide evidence relating to this challenge, ideate two possible proposals and consider how technology can be used to help address this challenge. 

I identified the following challenge within my current students; 

"A significant number of our 2021 Year 7/8 cohort are below curriculum level expectation in Mathematics, due to gaps in their maths knowledge". 

Once our Moonshot Proposal was complete, we were teamed up with another teacher from the programme. The purpose of teaming up with another teacher was to dive deeper into our initial proposals and ask 5 'why' questions. This helped me to dissect and unpack my problem at a deeper level, but it also helped to reveal the underlying causes of the problem.  

I have attached my '5 Why's' Poster below, this displays our conversation around my proposal. 

This was a relatively simple tool to use, it helped to identify the most obvious aspects of the problem and allows us to dig deeper into the problem. 

2021 Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers (MIT)

This year I have been fortunate enough to become part of the 2021 Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers Programme.  Throughout the year, I will be working alongside 6 others teachers from around New Zealand to "investigate ways to accelerate learning outcomes for our young people via the Manaiakalani pedagogy" (Learn, Create, Share). 

The Manaiakalani Education Trust will support our projects this year and will help us to challenge our teaching practice through inquiring in innovative ways. This project will be very collaborative and we will be drawing on each other throughout the year to help guide us through our projects.

The challenge I plan to investigate this year with my students is around maths knowledge - I would like to design a tool that will help them to develop their maths knowledge to further improve their overall mathematics ability.  

Throughout the year, we will be using design thinking principles to guide us - these will be further explained in subsequent blog posts.

I am looking forward to being part of this programme and meeting the teachers I will be working alongside. I will keep my blog updated with my projects progress throughout the year.