Creating Learning Opportunities That Challenge Students to Use a Design Process to Innovate and Solve Problems

This week's learning was all about creating learning opportunities that challenge students to use a design process to innovate and solve problems. 

A.J Juliani & John Spencer wrote the book, LAUNCH: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student, which is the book I have been using to help guide our learning for the different ISTE learning objectives we are focusing on for this learning team. These two authors created this design process as a way to help others integrate design thinking into everyday learning that takes place in the classroom. The LAUNCH Cycle was the perfect way to get us thinking about the week's design process learning objective!

To begin our learning for the day, we spent time reading about the LAUNCH Cycle. Next, we used a collaborative Google Doc to share our thoughts to the following questions, then held a live group discussion. 

Next, after reviewing the phases of the LAUNCH Cycle together, participants were presented with two challenge options to choose from.  

 

Participants formed their teams, then used some resources I put together for them to use while they worked their way through the LAUNCH Cycle phases and completed their challenge. 

Both teams did a fantastic job with their designs! 

When the designs were complete for the day, we took some time to reflect on the design process they used. There are several questions that came up in their reflections. It will be fun to address these questions together next week! 

I learned several things from going through this learning activity from the facilitator perspective. I learned how important it is to have question stems ready to go for the different phases of the LAUNCH cycle, for both students and the facilitator. I also learned that I need to spend more time finding ideas to help make the different phases easier to formatively assess and provide feedback. If I was using this process with a particular learning goal in mind (such as a writing, research, or content standard) I would definitely need some resources to help my students focus on that particular learning goal. For this upcoming week, I am going to spend some time helping teachers think through examples of how this design process can be used in their own classroom. 

Launch Cycle Plan... aka Change the World... aka No Out-of-Class Grading Project

We all need our motivators. And at the end of the year, my motivation is going to be "How do I get out of here without spending all my time grading stuff?" So launch cycle, here I come!!

My kids are reading The Giver which is supposed to be a utopia, but it's not really. I mean *SPOILER* they kill people when they get too old or if they break rules or are a baby who won't sleep or grow fast enough... Um.. MESSED UP! But that is also what makes the novel so good!

Anyway, so after the emotional rollercoster that is this book... We will take a look at world issues and each group is going to try to tackle a world issue they want to help solve. How can you create awareness? How can you do something small to help? What steps can you take? How is social media going to help? AKA all the social media!!

Like I said in our Google Hangout, now is the time to try this stuff because if it fails... well... I say good bye to the kids and we try again another time! :)

So... I better get a certain someone in my classroom at the end of the year to make sure this thing doesn't flop!!! *cough* Janelle *cough* Clear your schedule!!!

#4 Using the LAUNCH Cycle Ideas

         I really love having the framework of the LAUNCH Cycle. I do so many projects with the students, and I think this would help me and the students focus on the learning while creating the project. I am really excited about learning more about it and looking through the resources to help me plan and teach!
       Some of the areas that I can really see using it are when we talk about working and living in space. Students have some choice in areas of interest and then create models. We build rockets and design parts that will help it fly higher and straighter (fins, shape, size), so the research piece of LAUNCH is really important. I really like the part where the students can create, test, and then go back to make improvements before sharing it with an audience. To me, this is where the learning really takes place; and it how the real world works.
        Other areas are when I get to teach 8th graders and the curriculum is a lot about human impact on the world. When I was listening to Ms. Mangold today,  I thought it would be really neat to do a joint project where they read the book in her room, and learned about real world issues in science, then designed a way to either educate the adults around us or established a project or event that would address some of the issues they see that need to be "fixed." I think that would be so empowering to students and something they would never forget. I just really love the process and I want to know more about it and use it. I can't wait to learn more and try it.

Design Thinking in the Classroom

Reading about the LAUNCH design, I've struggled to figure out how to incorporate it into my classroom next year.  Student empowerment, student choice, creativity ... all of those I can envision.  Design thinking?  That's tougher.  I'm intrigued, however, and I wanted to go deeper, so I did purchase the LAUNCH book - and I'm working my way through it.  I'm about halfway through and, while I still don't fully see how I can use this in my ELA classroom, they do discuss Wonder Days, 20% and other methods of allowing students to follow their passions, which I can see using a bit more easily than the full LAUNCH design.  Maybe I'm reading it wrong and it's not as "big" or as time-consuming as it seems, but since the authors even note that time is a valid issue, I may not be as far off as I think I am.

That being said, I did connect to what the authors said about research.  Too many times we think only of text-based research, when there are so many other sources out there students can use.  With my media background, I'm all over that :)  Yes, there's text research, but there's also multimedia (YouTube was the example they gave - if you want to learn how to do something, most people will watch YouTube videos over reading a manual).  Videos, podcasts, etc. are just as valid as some text-based sources.  As the authors point out, no matter what type of source your students use, they have to learn how to evaluate it (if it's reliable, for example). 

One quote that stuck with me, so far, is "If you assign a project and get back thirty of the exact same thing, that's no a project.  That's a recipe."  To me, this fits into everything we've talked about so far in this class - student ownership, student choice, and creativity.  If we set what standards we want to hit, but we give the kids leeway on the product (and possibly the journey), we're getting them to think deeper.

I'm going to finish the LAUNCH book (not before this class is over, but hopefully before the year is over!)  I'm also going to continue digging into project-based learning and other collaboration designs.  It's possible I'll never use LAUNCH in its entirety, but in combination with things - or simply adopting the mindset of the authors - I think I can bring a lot of interesting methods to my classroom next year.

Let's Go To LAUNCH

The LAUNCH Cycle is an interesting framework to try and implement learning methods in a classroom. I liken the Launch Cycle to the scientific method. I see parallels between the process. There is a problem that is identified. Theories and ideas about the problem are created. Some sort of experimentation and implementation of methods. The you take information about the methods and alter them to make them better and cover more and allow for more learning.
Social Studies talks about all sorts of problems and issues we have in the world. Students are able to identify these problems and come up with a whole slew of creative solutions. We talk about pollution all the time, especially after the release of the worldwide sensation video 'EARTH." We watched the video in class and talked about the problems and how we can work and what we can do to possibly alleviate the problem. The students are able to use the Launch Cycle to make and set goals on things that they want to learn. It covers the topic for creation and taking ownership of their learning. 

Launch Cycle example...and a small rant.

   There are several instructional models to help guide teachers in the lesson design process.  No matter the model, each lesson needs to have a clearly articulated learning objective or standard.  The model that I am going to use for this blog post is the LAUNCH Cycle that was developed by John Spencer and AJ Juliani.  This model is best used when there is a tangible finished project.  The steps in the LAUNCH Cycle are as follows:

                 L-  Look, Listen, Learn

  A-      Ask tons of questions

  U-  Understand the process or problem

  N-  Navigate Ideas

                 C-  Create a prototype

                 H- Highlight and fix

   The project that I am looking at creating is for US History I during our study of the Gilded Age.  I am going to look at the works of Horatio Alger.  He is best known for his novels about young men working from nothing to middle or upper class.  His novels emphasize hard work and honesty.  Using this as a backdrop, as a class we are going to look at the traits of successful people.  This is going to be the first step of the process.  The second step is questioning.  We will brainstorm traits of successful people and look at different mindsets like victim mindset verses and empowered mindset.  This will be done in groups with each group sharing their findings.  The next step will be each group looking at successful people and their character traits.  This will be through the internet.  The groups will also need to find someone in the community that has been successful in their profession.  The groups will need to develop questions and organize their findings.  This is the understanding part of the process.   The navigation part of the process will have the groups organize their information and look for trends and similarities of what successful people have done to get to where they are.  The next step is creating a web page with their findings.  They will need to create profiles of the people they talked to and researched.  These will be placed on a class website.  The students will evaluate each group’s work as part of the last step before the pages go live.  There will be a final step that I want the students to accomplish before we wrap up this project.  I want the students to individually reflect on several things.  These include what they see for themselves after high school, how will they get there, and what habits will either help or hinder them in achieving their goals.  The students will be evaluated using a rubric that they receive beforehand so that they have an idea on what my expectations are.  Students will use shared documents within their groups.  They will also use audio and or video for their interviews.  They will create the web pages to present their information as well as presenting it to the class.

   I will also evaluate myself using Scott McLeod’s 4 Shifts Protocol.  The first being deeper thinking and learning.  After some background information, I believe that the students will be using critical thinking skills, practicing effective communication skills, collaboration, and creativity.  The second involves authentic work.  In using members of the community, the students will be moving their learning outside of the classroom and start the process of learning how to interact with adults outside of a classroom setting.  The third protocol involves student agency and personalization.  The groups will have the freedom to choose different people to focus their project on along with different ways for the final project to look.  The last protocol looks at technology use.  The technology that the students will be using allows for better organization and communication.  The technology use is not just an add on, but an integral part of the project.

   This may not seem like a typical history project, but a big part of history is looking at the lessons from the past and applying them to current  and future decisions.  We need to get beyond answers that can be answered by a simple Google search and explore the lessons, struggles, and triumphs or those that came before us.  History can be a great avenue to teach critical thinking skills and discover the paths to our own personal success at whatever level we are able to achieve. 

Using Design Thinking in Classroom

Design thinking is an interesting model for classroom learning and an interesting way to try and get students to move from just being engaged in their learning to facilitating and taking control of their own learning.  As we learned about in our session design process requires a great deal of time for the students to explore the hows of their learning and work on designing and redesigning their work.  I have really worked to try and come up with some useful ideas for how to use design thinking in my classroom experience moving forward.  Many of the ideas I came across in my research are something that either does not seem feasible to me or is something that seems like it is not really an idea designed to help students learn/use the curriculum but more to just create a product.  I really struggled with how to use design thinking in the Foreign Language classroom but then I realized that I could much more easily add it to my ELL classes to spark the students use of English skills.  If my students were asked to create a game out of a few simple objects then I could use that as a framework for our learning and build-in assessments and steps that forced the students to use English Language skills in order to present aspects of their learning and creation such as: written rules for the game, a video explanation of how to play the game, research notes and annotations that show how they research and understand, etc. I also think that I can work on having the students use their own interests as a base and have them work to find solutions to the problems that they see in the world or the things they want to improve and make better and have them use the Launch cycle process with assessment steps as a framework to use the language and help grow in their English skills

As I continue to try and research ideas for design theory and the launch cycle I'm sure I will become more inspired to use specific ideas to get the students best possible engagement. As of right now I am still a little short-changed on specific ideas but I hope to continue to gain a better understanding moving forward

I know that I have much to learn and that there are many different ways out there that the students can be reached out to in order to make their learning more enjoyable and provide a better grasp of the content and a more meaningful learning experience.  I think that Design theory is one way that we can really reach out to students to help motivate them and empower them to take control and responsibility for their own learning.