The final design
Reflection
This week, we’re looking at Stage 4 of the Eduro Design Thinking course, which is called Reflection.
Now, reflection has never been a problem for me. I’m what one call an Abstract Sequential thinker. Abstract Sequential thinkers:
- want to analyze situations before making a decision or acting
- don’t like it when there is too little time to deal with a subject thoroughly
So, reflection is a way of life for me. It’s not something that is done afterwards. Most of my reflection happens before I do anything, actually. It definitely happens during and after something.
If one is not continuously reflecting, then how does one “live”, rather than just “exist”?
A reflection on Paris
I have been so upset by the Paris attacks, which happened only a stone’s throw away from me (3 hours by train) that I felt inspired to make something to honour those who have lost their lives senselessly due to terrorism:
This was my way of reflecting on the Paris events.
Reflection comes in many forms
Reflection in our household: writing, doodling, sketching
Pictured above are the ways that Reflection happens in our family. I’ve been journaling since I was 16. So, my strengths are in writing and you can see my writing journal. My blog home, here, also houses my written reflections about Education.
In recent years, I’ve tried to reflect by doodling thoughts and ideas on my iPad, but notice in the above picture, that it is still heavily text-based. I don’t draw well and I have no idea how I turned out two kids that do!
Tedtalk Lausanne 2015
Above: I’m trying to incorporate more “drawing” because it forces me to engage with the content in a different way than I’m used to
You can also see a preliminary sketch for a mask, done by my youngest (10 years old at the time). The final product is pictured at the top of the blogpost.
You also see in the right of the picture several sketched models for different pop-up cards, done by my eldest (~14 years old at the time).
The Assignment
Our assignment this week is:
If reflection is about documentation, how can you provide students with an opportunity to document and reflect on their learning? What strategies will be best for reflecting on the prototype?
To me, the question is not, “How will I get my kids to document their reflection?” but “How can I show my students the value of documenting down their thinking?”
Sam Sherratt calls this “Bubble Catchers”. The bubbles are the ideas. How will you catch them so they don’t float away? I would use this video to inspire the students:
See Sam Sherratt’s blogpost about Bubble Catchers.
There are more tools than ever to “Bubble Catch” and we have to remember that not all methods suit every person and every purpose. Many of the reflective methods that I’ve listed below came from the Design Thinking for Educator’s toolkit.
- old fashioned journal writing
- writing a story
- doodles
- diagram
- storyboarding
- snapshots with an iPad or iPhone
- short videos (like Vines)
- mock-up
- an interaction
- create a brief
- build a model
- create an ad
- create a music video
- create an infographic
- create a role play
- slideshow
- elevator pitch
Reflect to inject life, not death
I must say that I don’t like the way that the IB flogs at student reflections until they hate the process 
I see my own children being forced to write pages of reflections for marks and often for subjects that shouldn’t require written reflections: Physical Education, Drama, Art, Music etc. Reflection should be inspired from within, not legislated from “without”. I’ve seen my kids fill pages with text simply because there is a minimum word requirement. They writing a bunch of tosh and it isn’t authentic reflection, and they know it. Talk about counter-intuitive teaching!
I’ve vowed to myself to NEVER do that to my students. I love writing and journaling and it would break my heart to turn kids off from the joy of writing, because I’ve legislated reflection “on my terms”. Surely, we can find a better balance. Not everything has to be in paragraph form.
Reflect on our strengths and weaknesses as Designers
I think it’s valuable for each of us to know what strengths and weakness we bring to the Design process. Below is a chart of different types of “Mind-Styles”. What type of thinking closely matches your style? What are the strengths and weaknesses that you bring to the Design table?
Graphic from: http://web.cortland.edu/andersmd/learning/Gregorc.htm
Other Reflective Resources
The Design Thinking workbook has pages that you can use for reflection. There are guiding questions there that will help me to reflect in more divergent ways, than I am used to.
Visible Thinking also has many different types of frameworks to document our thinking, thereby giving us different insights, depending on what framework we use. We should use a variety of them.
Summary
Just as Design Thinking is willing to try different solutions, we should be willing to try different ways of Reflecting. We’re a by-product of the environment and context that we work in. We should vary the environment and methods that we reflect with, to gain new insights into ourselves and into our ideas.
What is your preferred way of reflecting?
Vivian