Ideate

The image above is a screenshot taken from the Introduction to Design Thinking Process Guide from Stanford's d.school.

Ideating to develop techquity questions

As part of the work on the first design day, participants brainstormed questions that interested them. This question generation preceded some definition work and was an exercise in thinking flexibly. The list of questions from Park Lane Elementary (below) appears in hindsight to present a broad range of possibilities for inquiry work for audiences hoping to engage in techquity inspired work.

• How might we create curriculums that utilize the technology in the classroom so that it can adapt to our students and their needs (language, special needs, etc.)
• How might we cultivate an environment to provide students safe opportunities to communicate and seek knowledge using technology?
• How might we create a way to allow students to write their thinking/ideas into their chromebooks and share with the show class in a way that benefits discussion?
• Students can begin writing their ideas in complete sentences. This way they practice writing and organizing ideas.
• How can we create a tool that allows students to record oral stories and then requires them to make revisions through more traditional writing practices?
• How can we move from a tool for learning to creating learning environments that use tools?
• How might we use technology to connect and define our classroom as a network of learners where we have access to each other for opportunities to extend our learning?
• How can we develop/refine the writing lessons to encourage the use of technology as a support for student production?
• How can we create lessons that let students demonstrate their understanding through games?
• How can we model appropriate use of technology that allows students to explore a variety of world topics while maintaining rigor?
• How might we create interactive lessons that can be shared and used by the students from the existing technology we have?
• How do we encourage competition among students through viewing tutorials and trying our new learning?
• How do we move students from a game/play state of mind to a creative state of mind (problem-solving)?
• What next move should we make to ensure all students are met at their point of need when using technology?
• How might we make or create a technology tool that allows students to plan writing using speech to text?
• How can technology be used to connect the students to the teacher through interactive activities/apps, that allows the teacher to project the students work onto the smartboard?

Ideating to generate inquiry projects

In that same first collaborative design day, we asked a group of central office support staff, including directors, teachers on special assignment like AGATE leaders, and instructional coaches to engage in a rapid prototyping design cycle. These designers went through a whole design process in rapid fashion (using an adaptation of this agenda from the Colorado Education Initiative), working for smaller breakout groups from our original school teams. In that way, each school had three design opportunities that led to brainstorming sessions, rapid design and prototype pitches. With a total of six design ideas across two schools, our work surfaced a broad range of possibilities, which is the goal of ideation.

Both participating schools asked for site-specific design days as a follow up to our first meeting in order to involve more stakeholders and to process the implications of the rapid design work they had experienced. The first day left them inspired by the possibilities of design work and also wanting to have a second chance to go through the process with an eye toward creating actionable designs.

Ideating to strengthen inquiry projects

At the school sites for the site-specific design, we led participants through an "idea jam" as a way of generating still more possibilities in the focus areas each school identified. The idea jam professional learning is a concept introduced to APS by Hi Howard of the Front Range BOCES and central to the facilitation of an idea jam is free association. The screenshot below shows the example of free association we borrowed from Hi Howard in order to support participants in free association.

By using free association before the participants returned to their inquiry questions and the tangible work they wanted to use for inquiry design, we asked them to keep the flexible mindset about what was possible and also to engage their more creative impulses while thinking about equity. The image below illustrates how participants began with free association (map), then generated "what if" statements (stickies), and then grouped those statements beneath inquiry questions.