Design Process
I used my favorite digital mind-mapping tool "Popplet" to create this visual. My early project prototype audience was students, teachers and parents. Ultimately, I decided my target audience was teachers.
Description of the Educational Context
Students in my 4th/5th grade Read 180 class need to make more than one year's worth of reading growth in order to reach grade level. Sometimes they don't realize the progress they are making (sometimes because once it "clicks" they made tremendous gains but still view themselves as low readers). Previously we have set personal growth goals around the Reading Inventory as well as Reading Counts points and recorded them on an individualized Growth Goals chart posted on the wall. Their monthly quiz average is posted in a different area of the room. Students are very familiar with the Reading Inventory and understand what their score means and how both teachers/students use the information (primarily to help students select appropriate home reading books as well as for placement and to measure growth). This test is only administered 4 times per year which is not frequent enough feedback for students in intensive intervention. To make matters worse, students can be stuck in BR(0) for 1+ years at times and then they interpret these scores as No Progress. I call our RI testing day "Cheers and Tears" because students place a tremendous importance on these results. Sociocultural: Northwood Elementary in North Napa (Napa Valley Unified School District) is in it's first year of becoming a Title 1 school. It is a "neighborhood" school that is also an AVID Elementary site. Our school is K-5 and has approximately 300 students with 2 teachers per grade level. Students requiring intensive reading intervention receive 60 minutes as 3rd graders with System 44 (not ELA replacement) and Read 180 for 4th/5th graders for 90 minutes per day (ELA replacement). Many of my students do not have devices/internet at home so lack of home access slows their progress on many of the software programs. Technical: I have a bank of 8 desktops computers as well as 8 Chromebooks in my classroom. I am trying to utilize a kid friendly math graphing program that will not require any teacher support with the technology aspect. The technical aspect does not present much of a problem since each student works on a computer software program for at least 20 minutes per day and we generally do not have connection problems. There is one printer in the room that is connected to the teacher computer only so the district computer tech would need to connect all of them to the single printer. If that doesn't work, there is an option for students to email their data to my teacher computer. Informational: Learn how to analyze their different reading scores and how they impact/measure progress, teacher needs to learn how to provide feedback and set high expectations that will help ensure the student is on the right path and not just provide praise. User Goals-Accurately record personal reading scores on a digital math website -Analyze data on a bar graph and interpret the results -Write monthly written reflection/next steps for reading goals -Speak individually with the teacher about their "takeaways" for next step |
Research
Support and Next Steps
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Instructional Design Model:
Please click on the image to the right to learn more about an Instructional Design Model called "Pebble in the Pond" by M. David Merrill (2002) that my Cohort members and I researched. It provides a brief overview of it's primary concepts and principles. |
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Creating My Logo
Who would have thought the amount of time that goes behind creating a logo? There are so many design features to be considered from color choice, font, use of white space, symbolism, etc. that all contribute to what message/feeling the viewer takes away. At first I believed this was going to be a pretty easy process, but once I jumped into it I found the tech tools I could find didn't really help me create my vision. I experimented with logomakr.com I knew I wanted to play around with the concept of "visualization" so this is what I first came up with...
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Not great, right? I then tried to get clever and play around with the 3 word catch phrase. I thought of "Read"y, "Set" "GrOw" and thought of a stoplight concept with red/yellow/green. Kind of cheesy and not very visually appealing. I did like the color combination so I though maybe I could combine it with my bar graph concept. Once I decided on the bar graph visual, I found an image that looked like a bar graph and book spines on a bookshelf to me. I then created a mirror image. I was pretty proud of it so I braced myself for feedback/critique from my Cohort.
To my relief, their feedback was positive and many people saw my "hidden meaning" of the data table and book spines. They suggested I replace the second word with "Reflect" which I instantly loved because I actually used a mirror image when I created this design.