This week my team and I worked on the Interpretation Phase of our Design Thinking project. We communicated through text, phone calls, and emails. We created a Padlet to share our findings and we tracked our progress through the parts of this phase in a Google Slide project. On the Padlet we sorted our discoveries by the themes that emerged. We chose this Web 2.0 tool to use for this activity since we could all edit simultaneously. It is also very simple to add, edit, and move the notes around. We saw that time, access to internet and/or internet capable device, language barriers, understanding online homework, and technical problems were common in the comments from our interviews. This week, we each were responsible for adding the stories we collected to the Padlet. From looking at our combined information I see that accessibility (whether caused by lack of access to internet or by language barriers) is a big concern that impacts the success of implementing online homework. The parents and students used the word “frustrated” a lot when discussing this topic. This leads me to believe that they want to be able to fully participate in school (meaning homework), but feel like they cannot due to reasons that they are unable to change at this time.
The teachers I spoke with sympathized with this and were also concerned that the students who can access online homework are at an advantage compared to those who cannot. They also expressed that they felt pressure from some parents to offer online homework since “that is what last years’ teacher did”, but were unsure how to balance this demand with the knowledge that many of his students don’t have devices to use at home. Overall, the comments lead us to believe that in general students, parents, and teachers like the concept of online homework. However, working out the logistics is a problem.This week I did not face any problems. Our group worked very well together this week and each person did what he/she said they were going to do.
Though I do think Padlet was a great web 2.0 tool to use to bring our findings together, I wonder if using something like Popplet, where multiple ideas can be connected to the same note, might have given us more flexibility in the grouping of the data. This is a minor change, that I may try out in the future.
This process is a really good activity to do when beginning to share data or findings with a group. I have used this process with my staff before when we were trying to find a solution to some campus wide behavior issues. Each staff member contributed post-it notes onto one board. Then we began to sort the notes by common themes. This helped us come to some possible solutions that were then able to test out. In my classroom this might be an excellent way to gather information from our students for the Empathy uint I teach at the beginning of the year. Students can gather responses and then we can look for common themes once all the post-it notes are together. I think the process of thinking critically about the stories gathered helps to paint a broader picture of the issue at hand and will then lead to better ideas and possible solutions.
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.
The teachers I spoke with sympathized with this and were also concerned that the students who can access online homework are at an advantage compared to those who cannot. They also expressed that they felt pressure from some parents to offer online homework since “that is what last years’ teacher did”, but were unsure how to balance this demand with the knowledge that many of his students don’t have devices to use at home. Overall, the comments lead us to believe that in general students, parents, and teachers like the concept of online homework. However, working out the logistics is a problem.This week I did not face any problems. Our group worked very well together this week and each person did what he/she said they were going to do.
Though I do think Padlet was a great web 2.0 tool to use to bring our findings together, I wonder if using something like Popplet, where multiple ideas can be connected to the same note, might have given us more flexibility in the grouping of the data. This is a minor change, that I may try out in the future.
This process is a really good activity to do when beginning to share data or findings with a group. I have used this process with my staff before when we were trying to find a solution to some campus wide behavior issues. Each staff member contributed post-it notes onto one board. Then we began to sort the notes by common themes. This helped us come to some possible solutions that were then able to test out. In my classroom this might be an excellent way to gather information from our students for the Empathy uint I teach at the beginning of the year. Students can gather responses and then we can look for common themes once all the post-it notes are together. I think the process of thinking critically about the stories gathered helps to paint a broader picture of the issue at hand and will then lead to better ideas and possible solutions.
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.