What are your goals for Graduate School? What are your goals for class? How do you see them intersecting?

 

My goals for graduate school are to develop the tools to be productive in the work force and become more interactive in my learning. I also hope to learn from practitioners some of the tools that are most helpful in the workforce. Through observations I hope to see practitioners at work; learning new ways of teaching, how to run an organization or how to design a space. I understand that I will not get the specific hows, but want to learn about some of the successful tools that are available for me to use. For this class I hope to become familiar with some of the key vocabulary used in designing learning spaces as well as bridge my minimal knowledge of design with my knowledge of learning. I hope to have fun while doing all of these things.

 

Dan Thanks Paitra, especially for your last comment regarding fun, I'm delighted to see that! Throughout this class we will use actual tools such as design journals, cameras, computers, this wiki, etc. and we will also add other tools such as design skills (personas, scenarios, observations/needfinding, prototyping) and idea generation skills (brainstorming, reflecting, creating). I hope that this community can also give you the confidence to seek out other tools on your own or as a part of other communities.

 

Whitney Do you have any idea how you want to apply these skills in the workforce? What do you want to do? I am also excited to have fun!

 

Me again (Paitra) - As I read through people’s ideas I keep thinking about what happens in the education world and why there are not more learning spaces that are actually conducive to learning. I also wonder if we will have the opportunity to talk with students about their learning spaces, specifically for our final projects.

 

Dave: As I think about the learning spaces in schools, it is incredible how little thought has often been given the physical spaces themselves. Teachers do what they can to spice a place up, but often they are starting with a plain square room. Perhaps that is the ideal learning space, but I have a feeling that in reality, little thought has been put into the design of that classroom in regards to how to enhance learning, rather than costs.

 

Lynn: Hi Paitra! I am aslo interested in developing tools to help poeple be porductive and interactive in a work place setting. When we use the words "learning" or "educaiton", we tend to think of children or students in school, but there are so many educaiton-related aspects that we can imporve and incorporate in the workforce. Looking forward to having fun together in the class!

 

Jim: Hey Paitra, glad you're here. I really liked working with you in Denise's class. Thats a great idea re: getting students to reflect on what institutionalized learning spaces are like and to involve them in the design of their own spaces. Maybe we will get to do that here. But so much happens outside the classroom now, I would think that we should also look at "learning spaces" outside school. I see a coffee table book coming out of this (you ever see that book that shows how people live? Photographs of families and all their posessions in the front yard? (Eithopian family vs Menlo park family..) It would be cool to do a similar project with learning spaces/media

 

 

Claudia: Hi Paitra. Like Jim, I also really like your idea of getting feedback from the people who use learning spaces. It's one thing to design a cool learning environment, but to get a real sense of the learning you need users to test it out! It'd be great if we could talk to people in various learning spaces to see how they use it and their views on it. In any case, I am sure you'll get some practice developing creativity and design. It's all about thinking outside the box, or in our case, outside the classroom :)

 

Annie A Hi Paitra, my biggest takeaway from this class last year were the tools that I learned in how to generate ideas to come up with new designs.  I was surprised how useful it proved to be in my summer job last year and really led me to take more design classes this year to keep building my skills.  I hope you'll also find the same value from this class in being able to use the skills in your future work!

 

 

What have you learned in graduate school?  How do you know that you have learned it?

Over my course at Stanford I have learned a wide range of things, from how to get design curriculum to new ways of thinking about youth. Specifically I learned how to design curriculum from the backwards design model. I know I learned this because I was able to produce a curriculum for a site that demonstrated what I learned.  I have also learned to be a better writer.  This is demonstrated through a portfolio of my work, which demonstrated higher levels of thinking and clear structure, additionally I feel more confident in my writing. Some of the other things I am learning are how to improve my leadership and interpersonal skills I hope these will be demonstrated through clearer conversations and more effectiveness in the work place. The keys for me to recognize if I have learned something is my ability to use that skill and repeat it back to someone. I think this demonstrates true understanding and internalization of concepts. Further, I think there are many ways I can demonstrate this understanding, for example through projects, descriptions, papers, presentations and multimedia outlets.

 

Andrew--I like how clearly you express that you KNOW that you have learned things.  What I love about this topic is that for the learner it is very clear when we have learned something and when we have not.  I also like that you point to being able to do things--demonstrations of understanding.  I really can only say I have learned something when I have taken something and applied it in a novel context.  Finally, I love that the inter-personal dynamics is up there.  Are you taking touchy feely?  The class was transformative for me.

 

Dan - I agree with Andrew, thanks for expressing this so clearly.  I hope that your project in this class is an opportunity to put some of this learning into practice - you'll definitely have chances to 'demonstrate understandings' of inter-personal skills, writing skills, and design skills.  I think integrating touchy-feely is a great challenge to take on for this class and for the partners you are working with.

 

Notes: Friday, April 18, 2008

Use Verbs: creating, working, collaborating

Senarios - A description of what people did

• time stamps
• narative
• sketch
• check across population - test it
• scenario - takes the person you observed for your persona and places them in your location

 

Field Trip: New Orleans Library

 

 

  To view the comments click on the PDF document  New Orleans Library.pdf

 

"Share the Story"

 

 

Dan - Thanks for pushing on the format of this a little, I enjoyed reading this document, great pictures too.  So many challenges here, where did the library team even begin I wonder/  Did they start with what they could do, what the needs of their citizens were,  and how much attention to the unique needs immediately after the hurricane? 

 

Stanford GSB J. Hugh Jackson Library Visit

what kind of learning happens there, what kind of learning could happen there, and what some roles of libraries could or should be?

 

Looking around the space it looks as though there is room for individual and group work.  People sit in groups working at a laptop on some collaborative piece while others sit on their own typing.  Most people in the space are accompanied by computers, both laptops and desktops.  But no one is sitting without a computer.  Most work, based on books signed and the set up seems to be based around efficiency.  Magazines are displayed on the walls in clear cases; the magazines and news papers can be removed and carried with you.  The latest books are on display as well, making them easily accessible.  As I walk through the space I am coaght by the nasdaq display on the wall. I feel as though I have walked on to Wall Street. There are a line of computers aligning with it.

 

I would guess the intention of the library was to allow efficiency as well as a place to connect Business students to the world outside of Stanford.  They wanted students to be caught up on the latest news, business reports and ideas.  They also I would assume wanted people to work together. There are few spaces with individual space other then a row of cubical computer spaces, where a student reaches their head around to their neighbor.

 

Further they call to people with different desires for mobility.  Computers are placed at different levels, allowing those who want to, to stand up, while others sit; some sit high and some sit low.  All desk chairs are movable again suggesting they want people to work together.

 

Over all the sense of the library is quiet but not so quiet that you cannot speak, there is a sense of efficiency and competition. There is also the opportunity to learn more about what is happening in the world, at Stanford and in the GSB community.

 

Dan - It sounds like this library does a pretty good job of connecting what is happening beyond Stanford with the student experience here.  How might this be differnet from some of the more research oriented libraries on campus?   Interesting note that 'no one is sitting without a computer'  I wonder if this is a predictor of library behavior more broadly in the near future, or is the Stanford GSB library so much of an outlier that we can't make too many generalizations about its impact on other spaces.