Danielle Emmons EDT563 Blog

After reading the two readings, I have a lot of take aways that I think will help me with my design problem and with problems in the future. In Lupton, it emphasizes the importance of getting to know your users. An important feature of this is to observe them and to gather insight about their interests. When you want to understand someone, these are two really important ways to learn more about a person. Observation allows you to see things that they aren't telling you, or may not know how to tell you. Learning about their interests helps you create a solution that will truly work for them and that they will enjoy. In creative confidence, I really enjoyed reading about the real life examples they provided. It gave me a better understanding of what each aspect really meant. I like how it mentioned you have to decide to be creative and take risks. Being creative doesn't always come naturally to people and so something it really does come down to making the decision to try somethi...

For the warm up this week, I decided to make a to do list on sticky notes and then place them outside of the room. When I saw this as an option, I immediately felt like this is the warm up I should do. With teaching, course work and parent conferences next week, it's hard to not have my long to do list on my mind constantly. I found that it was helpful to do this because I now have the important things I must do written down, out of my head and even out of the room! It was a low prep warm up and I enjoyed it. I think there could be a way to adapt this to my classroom too. I was thinking I could have students write down a few things that are worrying them/ on their mind during our morning meeting. We could talk about them and then put them outside the classroom in a box or something. It would be interesting to try out. I tried both of the opposite thinking and analogy thinking to initiate my brainstorming phase. Each of them had their strong points. During the analogy thinking exerc...

For this weeks podcast, I listened to You 2.0 : The Empathy Gym. This was a particularly interesting podcast, because it centers around an actual scenario that a man placed on society. It was interesting and a bit shocking to hear how some people responded to this empathy experiment. During this podcast, some points really stuck out to me. At one point, one of the speakers was talking about his parents going through a divorce. He said that at first it was a struggle to understand each person and their different rules, but then he realized that his parents were hurting too. Once he realized that his parents were having a hard time with the divorce as well, it made it easier for him to understand them and connect with them. He realized what they were all going through wasn't that different. This stood out to me because I think a lot of time people, myself included, tend to get stuck on what is going on in our lives without realizing all of the other things happening in the lives o...

After receiving some feedback and thinking about what my problem statement was, I realized that I was working with two separate problems. I have decided to focus on the learner based problem rather than the teacher based problem. My problem statement is : “Students  need a way to  feel connected and safe with their classmates  because  mask wearing and social distancing prohibit them from interacting as they normally would/could . ” For this weeks post, I am going to write out some questions that I will be asking students during interviews.  Tell me about a time you felt really happy at school. Tell me about a time you really enjoyed an activity at school. When you think about wearing a mask and social distancing from your friends at school, how do you feel? Why? If you could change one thing about school, other than wearing a mask, what would it be? Why?

  Problem Statement:  From teacher perspective: “ I am  a teacher  trying to  create community and manage stress in the classroom  but  am struggling  because  of the constraints and new pressures this year  which makes me feel  overwhelmed ." From student perspective: “Students  need a way to  feel connected and safe with their classmates  because  mask wearing and social distancing prohibit them from interacting as they normally would/could . ” During my empathy gathering experience, I informally talked to co workers and students. This wasn't too difficult as we are all constantly talking about how we are feeling, what is working, what we wish we could change and how/if we could safely make the changes. From my coworkers (teachers), they expressed a high stress feeling constantly. Due to safety rules, students are in the classroom with their classroom teacher all day- including lunch and specials. There is no r...

  I was drawn to these two emotional maps as I was reading Act II. I liked how clear it was to see that there are ups and downs through each journey. For my design challenge, I am looking into social emotional health while being back at school. I tried to take the feedback I've been getting from kids and put it into the smiley face journey map and used the feedback from teachers for the other journey map. These maps feel incomplete because we are just at the beginning, but they are a snapshot of the first few weeks of in person learning for us. 

  Everyday in a classroom presents challenges that need solutions. This year especially we are faced with some new and difficult challenges. When speaking with the 4th graders in my classroom, I am hearing the same thing day after day. They LOVE being back at school, but wearing masks is a challenge. Mask wearing and social distancing prevents them from interacting with peers and staff as they normally would. It creates challenges with building community in our schools and in our classrooms, especially since we started our school year online for 3 weeks.  We have spent a lot of time and energy figuring out how to create a classroom environment where students can feel invited, comfortable and welcome while still following the guidelines of staying six feet apart and wearing masks. There are no more share days where students can bring in items to show to their classmates, because they are not allowed to bring anything to school. All of these small problems have been leading up t...

  For this assignment, I decided to listen to the Where Do We Go From Here episode. I’m glad that this episode was suggested for us, because I found it to be really interesting and enlightening. This episode touched on a topic that though I’ve heard of, has never affected me, so I hadn’t given it much thought. How lucky am I, and many others, to never have encountered this issue in our lives before. Along with having several realizations about the unfairness in society, I also learned about the history behind how and why public bathrooms are the way that they are. Many bathrooms stem back to segregation based on race, sexual preferences and fear of contracting AIDS. It was pretty shocking to hear all of the hoops they had to jump through, laws they had to address and steps they needed to take in order to solve their problem. As they began problem solving, the problem stemmed to be larger than the trans community. Public bathrooms in general are not accommodating to any population o...

There was a lot of new information to process this week from the podcast and links. I thought that Antoinette Carroll had several thought provoking statements that caused me to think about my teaching and learning and start to see how I could reevaluate and change things. One thing that I thought was really important that she said was that she does not go into communities that she has no knowledge of and that she would consider that a colonization. She mentioned that she has had offers to move her lab to other cities, but has refused. This got me thinking about the education system in general. There are overall general things that most schools follow- like the CCSS, certain standardized tests, etc. One of the biggest effects on our school is the community. We live in a very different community than most, and a lot of our themes focus around the area that we live in. If someone from New York City were to come in, they would have a completely different viewpoint of our town. I think with...

  For this post, I am responding to Alyssa Duchesne's color the overture post. I enjoyed reading your post because I can completely relate to the fatigue and clicking the space bar until you find a suitable color scheme. I thought that your names for your colors were very carefully chosen and that you gave excellent explanations behind the names that you gave. My question for you comes from the form of motivation! This year especially had been an exhausting one. You mentioned that you teach Kindergarten, which I imagine is so hard to manage when it comes to new COVID school rules. With everything going on, where do you find your motivation? There are times when I KNOW I should take work home or stay up a little later to finish something, but I don't follow through. So again, Where do you find motivation? Do you make sure to take time for yourself and do things you enjoy? Do you have relaxing techniques? Thanks in advance for your response!