Gottfried Design Process

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Design Process

We began our redesign of the portfolio as a team of two staff members and twelve students. As part of the Empathy piece of Design Thinking, each team of two interviewed at least three people (a combination of staff and students) about what they liked and did not like about the existing portfolio process. Together, the team defined the problems to be solved and the needs to be met. Each team of two then came up with a prototype designed to meet the needs expressed.

Each team then sought feedback from within the portfolio committee and from students and staff outside of the committee. We then worked together as a team to combine the best of all prototypes, which then went on to another round of feedback.

The final iteration was presented, by Andrew Biggs and I, to the staff in Spring 2015 before we rolled it out to the entire school. The power of engaging in the Design Thinking Process as a team of invested stakeholders was an effective way to get buy-in from all involved parties. We expected to meet resistance, but because we engaged people and sought feedback through each step in the design process, the attitude of students and staff toward this change was open and warm across the board.

Understanding the Students and Staff

It should be noted that all students at New Technology High school have access to their own laptops as it is a 1:1 school. Every student is expected to create a Weebly website using simple guidelines for setup of pages and URL addresses so that sites have some predictable navigation and are easy to find on the web.

In the first year of the project, students we given access to a series of video tutorials, created by me and another staff member, that explain expectations for the blogs, how to set up a blog, and why we are creating the blogs in the first place. Students are introduced to portfolios in 9th grade in the Introduction to Digital Media class and continue to work on their portfolios throughout their career through their advisory classes. Certain times are set aside throughout the year as a whole school to work on school portfolios/blogs.

Challenges that came up up in the first year included the fact that not all staff members were comfortable with the idea of blogging. Some did not see the value in blogging yet, or were not sure about trying something new. They were generally not bloggers and had not yet harnessed the power of blogging in their own professional lives. They did see the blog as another place to put student reflections, which was in itself, a good thing. The opportunity in the second year would be to show them how to extend the use of the blog to open up the reflections to the greater community and extend the use of the blog to include the other two goals of documentation and teaching.

The overall reception of the new blogging format was been very warm from the students and there was observed evidence that many students who already had blogs, were extremely interested in having all their blogging, both educational and personal, on one website. In addition, some students echoed the sentiments of some of the staff, in that they did’t yet see the value of blogging, but seem willing to try, an exciting prospect. They were thrilled to no longer have the complicated hoop-jumping of the old digital portfolio format.

The Capstone Project and Furthering Our Blogging Efforts

The next step for me, after the 2015 rollout, was to create a system of video tutorials, posters, resources and supports to help students and teachers go deeper with their blogs by introducing many of the ideas from learning models taught in the Innovative Learning program. I set out to go beyond just the technical support videos from the first year, to use pedagogical models to help students use blogging as an effective communication tool.

Pebble in the Pond Model

Some of the models covered include:

How to use visual design to increase learning and ease of use
The SITE and Situation/Gap/Help models to understand one’s audience
Clarke’s Model for teaching concepts and procedures
Understanding the Creative Brain set to help further the learning in our online community
Pebble in the Pond Model for Instructional Design

This year the portfolio program at New Tech has been grounded in pedagogy and innovation such that students and teachers of varying learning modalities can now access and understand the various steps to creating effective blog posts.

Prototype for Lessons and Initial Analysis

In order to assess next steps, I created a prototype for the design and technical video tutorials, as well as an Initial Analysis for the overall program moving forward. Click on the images below to see both documents.

And sometimes, good old low-tech sticky notes can really help to think through how to organize a large project.

Two Case Study Success Stories

E. a Sophomore in Chemistry, was asked by her teacher to document her learning in a student-chosen, personalized learning project about chemical reactions and food. The class was asked to describe the learning process, what happened and what did not, as well as personal reflections on the project. The Chemistry teacher asked E. if she could share her blog post on social media, since it was written so well and represented the project in an effective manner. With permission, the blog was shared on Facebook as well as Twitter on the Chemistry teacher's accounts.

Because the Chemistry teacher is followed by a fellow administrator at another local school, who is followed by many other educators and administrators, E.'s blog post was re-shared and read by over 300 people in one day, much to everyone's surprise. E. has said that it was very exciting to have her work shared so many times and that she looks forward to further blogging and will think write more purposefully, knowing that she has a larger audience.

The second case study involves a student in a Introduction to Digital Media class with a 9th grader. This student created an illustration that was so good, that I, as her teacher, questioned whether she had downloaded the image from Google. She was flattered and said that, no, she had spent the evening learning how to use the Revolve tool in Adobe Illustrator and the result was a perfect apple.

I requested that she take the time to write a post explaining how one uses that tool, as there might be plenty of other people who would be interested in learning about how to create something beautiful with that tool. I wrote a Facebook post about how great it was to have such engaged students who went above and beyond, and I explained the mixup and my thinking that she had plagiarized. A local Graphic Design Artist replied immediately that she was very interested in reading the student's post, because she had always wanted to learn that tool.

I walked over to the student in class and let her know that a local Graphic Design person was awaiting her post. She wrote the post within the class period and I posted the link to Facebook within that same class period. Within minutes, the student got a very encouraging note from my Graphic Design friend and I suggested, that if both parties were interested, that we ought to connect them to talk about a possible internship with the Graphic Designer.

If we want students to participate in the world around them, make connections with professionals outside of the walls of our school, create authentic writing tasks, blogging is the way to do it. In this case, the feedback was so immediate that it all happened within one class period.

The Evolution of a Logo

Sometimes the best way to start into a creative process like designing a logo means just doing a whole bunch of research for images that appeal to me. Below you will see some chosen images that attracted my attention. I fell in love with the idea of a typewriter logo, because it contains that strong connotation of a writer, sitting at a desk, coming up with amazing ideas and getting them down on paper. I like the idea of digital writing being rooted in the very history of printing, with the blog letters and the typewriter font.

I once saw a really cool video that has ideas coming down in actual paper thought bubbles. Again, it's about making digital ideas grounded in real, tangible materials like paper and sculptural objects.

Research

Support and Next Steps

A little humor also helps when tapping into the Creative Flow.

Here was my first iteration for the logo. Here I was just trying to make a relationship between all the ideas I had seen in my reference photos.

Then I found this lovely mobile with the 3D objects, which really spoke to my love of 3D Design. I liked the curve of the two rods and wanted to imitate that curve in my logo and find a way to make the logo look a little more 3D. Also, it was not clear in my first iteration that the blogs were specifically for schools which is why I added the words "school," as well as switching out the word "share" for the words "teach" and "learn."

In the final logo, the hanging thought bubbles have been stretched a bit to look more 3D and one even overlaps the right side of the logo box. There is more overlapping of the thought bubbles to create a more dynamic images where all parts are connected and in relationship to one another. I loved getting the chance to to design this.

I often teach Adobe Illustrator, but honestly, do not have a lot of personal experience with it myself. When I was in the business world, I paid other graphic designers to create my business assets for me. I took the lessons that I have taught my students and applied them to my own logo. I am really proud of the final design and feel as though I really do know what I'm doing! A nice little affirmation of my personal design skills!

In terms of color choices, there is something so clean and refreshing about light blue, black and white used together. I like that the tagline is emphasized with the white, as this is where the eye is drawn. The tagline made of very simple words are tied to the concept of thought in a very concrete way. My favorite color is light blue. I think it's a very soothing color and that can help when people are trying something new like blogging.