Graduate School Goal

I have been full-time mom for 3 and a half years and hoping that I could go back to the "work" life. I was hesitative as I have bee staying home for quite a long time and an expatriate, more explicitly "non-native speaker" in this culture. A degree from a prestigious school was one of the greatest possible solutions that I had. And that is why I am here to bridge the gap between my "home life" with the "work life". I was an online marketer and interested in online community and studied Educational Psychology for my undergraduate. LDT was a perfect topic for me to study.

 

I have been taking various learning, designing, technology classes. All were great ingredients to equip myself with more up-to-date technology and profound pedagogical learning theories.

 

Goal for this class is to develop strategical thinking process for designing learning events including spaces, curriclum, research.

 

Dan Hannah, I hope that this class can help you bridge your gaps. I also hope that the skills that we cover in this class can be applied to a wide variety of settings. A learner centered approahc to design is something that you can use in whichever communities you find yourself.

 

Rolf - Hi Hanna. Thanks for your reflection. I think understanding this 'learning space design process' is a great goal for the class. Keep that goal in mind as we cover different phases of the process in class. If I were improving on my experience from class last year, I would really try to be aware of where each exercise and class activity fit into the broader methodology. I hope you have fun this quarter!

 

Dana Hi, Hannah. I totally empathize with your need for a career bridge. This year is a good chance to build up some skills. I hope this ends up being helping you on your journey. Also, I like your picture.

 

 

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First meeting with LPCHS

 

 (Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford)

 

We went to the LPCHS(Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford) and had a team meeting with several teachers there.

Before we had the meeting we would like to know:

 

1. target audience - age, needs, gender, ,,,,,,

2. learning goal - what are we trying to design, achieve for our target audience

3. site tour - what space are we deisigning - any constraints,,,,,,,

4. stakeholders - beside our target audience who are our stakeholders and what are their needs on this project

 

and the findings are

 

1. target audience (children) - mixed age group (K-12), about gender ratio 50:50, from all over the world, but mainly from Palo Alto, various enthnic group

    q1: who is our target audience, is it the students or students and teachers

2. Learning goal : facilitation of schoo re-entry, continuity of education

3. site tour - very limited space for K-5 class, one big large retangle-shaped table, two round tables, not enough space for group work, individual work(picture above)

4. stakeholders - hospital (they are the main decision makers for the supports on school's plan, maybe teachers? they have the storage and portable classroom opinions

 

others:

children love "interaction"

would like to hear from the students' side as well as they are the target audience for our project

major issue is about space and portable classroom as many of the children have bedside learning.

- must have "collaboration", "peer-interaction"

 

 

 

Hannah 4/27

 

We had an interesting discussion during the class time. We discussed about this topic:

How do we see/think about people in these space?

 

We made a number of, various spectra to measure people's characterstic,attitude in these spaces. We had a little consensus to see the people in the space as user who engage and interact with the space and influence it to change.

 

Passive                                                      Active  (how much they involve and interact with space)

 <----------------------------------------------------->  

 

individual                                                   Community (is the user more independent or more social, interacting with other people?)

 <----------------------------------------------------->

 

Recepting                                                  Augmenting (is the user only recepting knowledge of the space or proactively augmenting the knowledge and information in the space?)

 <----------------------------------------------------->

 

Spontaneous                                             Directed (is the user more spontaneous and try out creative things in the space or more directed, follow directions?)

 <------------------------------------------------------>

 

Introvert                                                     Communicative (is the user more introvert, by him/herself or more communicative in the space?)

 <------------------------------------------------------>

 

Accepting                                                    Agency

 <------------------------------------------------------>

 

Some of them are overalaped each other but these are the categories we need to consider when we design a space. There are various kinds of people who use and interact with and in the space and the space that we are going to design has to convey and meet the needs of these people who are going to use our space. Against this back drop, it is very cruicial to find out our future users; their attitude, characteristic, background, needs, etc.

 

 

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5/5 hannah

 

Field Trip to Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose

I have been there more than ten times but the trip this time was a bit different. It helped me find a lot more things than I used to see there, mainly because I had a strong lense this time, "learning space design" lense. That lense helped me to see the things with different view and mind.  There is no doubt that the museum was a place for learning. It was amazing to see how much efforts and time the museum people spent to make the place meaningful and fun. These are the things that struck me.

 

	My Favorite - "Power Girl" - This big sign has been a great help for me and my son to have a conversation about the exhibit. Especially the questions has been a great source and trigger for us to explore that exhibit.   Persona, scenario and the questions make the space more engaging, proactive, interactive and inviting place.
	All the exhibit was in English, Spanish, and Vietamese. The information was so clear and sometimes interactive, have images to help people understand the contents - user-friendly. Again, great trigger for people, parents and kids have dialogue each other about the topic. Multi-language - care about community and again, try to engage and interact more with people.
	The whole museum is about activity and engagement. at every spot there is an activity for children to try. This is like Dewey "learning by doing" everywhere.

 

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Book Club

 

As a book club, Neha, Annie, Evlyn, Lynn, Bernard and myself read a book called "Medici effect".

 

Editor's note: More and more, innovation is springing not from particular industries or disciplines, but rather across them, says Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts & Cultures. "When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines, or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas."

  

I thoroughly enjoyed the Medici Effect and it's full of engaging stories and practical ideas. The book is all about being cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary to be innovative. To be innovative, you need to look for ideas, the more quantity ideas, the more quality ideas. So according to the author, we need to have full of ideas. And we do not need to be afraid of the failure.

 

Although it defies intuition, combining tandoori spices and smoked salmon works extraordinarily well.

 

Dan- Thanks for documenting this, I'm glad you enjoyed this book!

 

 

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Field Trip to Environment and Energy Building on Campus

 

 

 

 

 

 Dan - Sounds like your group got a lot out of the visit to Y2E2 and thinking about the connections that you can make to the LPCH project.  The amount of visual stimulation sounds compelling - I wonder how it impacts visitors differently than 'residents' (faculty and staff that live there).  Thanks for pointing out the importance of flexibility, that must be a very hard concept with the constraints at LPCH.  Nice observations, thanks for sharing.

 

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Stanford Library Visit

 

I went to Meyer Library Digital Language Lab as I am designing a cultural language lab in second life and I would like to know how the first-life language lab look like.

One of the most interesting aspect that I learned from the space is that the space has to be inviting and live in which users continously visit and use the space.

It was just not a traditional language lab where students practice listening and speaking but also it was an interactive arena where teachers and students can itnerac

	Classroom   There are 20 pcs, VCR, DVD player and audio deck as well. A number of technologies for facilitating language learning and teaching  - maximize the learning opportunity with technology for literacy
	My favoriate room was the presentation room. This room is for presentation. When I visited, there was a Spanish class. See-through glass wall helped me to see what was going on in there. There was a video camera which can record the presentation and the video clip is revivewed with teacher and student - I think there is no better way than reviewing, watching the video of my presentation and go over with teacher about goods and bads.
	One sone side of the presentation room, there was a blackboard wall on which Chineses characters were written. Huge letters were inviting me to learn the language. Especially there was a rat drawing and Chinese character for rat. Many Chinese characters were developed by pictograms, in which meaning was expressed firectly by the shapes. The rat charater and the drawing tells about pictograms and the character.
	Interestingly enough there was a poster advertising "Stanford Non-Native Rapper Contest". It was held by Stanford Digital Language lab. That was a great example how to continously comunicate with the users in the space and how to keep motivating and inviting the users to use the space. User participant can be one of the most invaluable aspect of making the space live.

 

Dan - Nice experiences and again good job documenting your trip, we really know what you are talking about.  One interesting thing about the language lab is that it used in both formal activities led by instructors and informal activities that are student driven.  How well does the space support these two different interactions? Are the compromioses that both groups of users (students and instructors) ones that they are willing to make?  I love the detail about the chalkboard with the larger characters inviting you to learn how to create the Chinese characters.