Introduction
The need for this professional fellowship is to learn new strategies and methods to enhance and improve project-based learning and STEM education at Ravenswood. A STEM-educated workforce will play a crucial role in growing the future economy of Australia and it is predicted that by the year 2030 we will spend 77% more time using STEM skills than we do today (Foundation for Young Australians, 2017). According to the Australian Government, STEM education is important for many reasons, including the need to develop 21st century skills, to keep pace with changes in technology, the ability to understand and apply data and to learn how to develop solutions to complex problems. It has been predicted that 40% of Australia’s workforce will be replaced by automation (Committee for Economic Development of Australia).
This website is a record of my trip to Los Angeles and San Diego and the educational experiences I encountered. If you would like to comment on this website or ask questions about my Professional Fellowship you can email me at mscadding@ravenswood.nsw.edu.au.
Part 2 - San Diego
Purpose of visit: participate in High Tech High (HTH) PBL Design Camp. The Design Camp aims to facilitate the creation of new ideas for projects. Participants will learn to navigate the phases of the design process using the HTH Learning Compass. Educators will be encouraged to notice and reflect on the impact design choices have on student engagement. By the end of the 3 days educators will have developed a unique project plan that encourages deep learning.
Travel Journal
Arrival in Los Angeles - April 16 to 18, 2023
On Sunday 16th April I left Sydney for Los Angeles, the first leg of my trip. My alarm was set for 5am, however, sleep did not come easy as I was too excited to start my journey, so I was up at 4.30am. A taxi was booked for 5.30am and due to the early hour we flew to Sydney International in no time, I wish driving around Sydney could be this quick all of the time. Checked in and my bag dropped I relaxed, walked around and had some food before my flight left at 9.25am. The flight to LA took around 12 hours and was smooth sailing. We landed just before 6am. Once through the border check point I collected my suitcase and headed to my hotel to leave my bags, get some breakfast and find my bearings. My first activity today was a visit to SoFi Stadium, and I was able to reach this stadium on public transport as it was not far from the hotel. Buses are incredibly cheap in LA! I had booked a behind the scenes tour of this very new and impressive stadium, which is home to the LA Rams and LA Chargers NFL teams and also hosts a multitude of other events, such as WWE Wrestle Mania and pop concerts. The tour included access to hospitality and entertainment spaces, suites, media boxes, locker rooms and the player tunnel. The tour was fantastic and I learnt much about the incredible engineering behind this impressive structure. The roof of the stadium is covered with 27 thousand tiny LED lights that display game information and other messages. The stadium is close to LAX airport and the messages displayed on the roof are visible to passengers on flights as they pass the stadium. The playing surface was built 100 metres below ground level due to the proximity to the airport and the height restrictions imposed on the stadium engineers. Another fact about the roof is that it is not attached to the stadium structure. This is to protect the stadium during an earthquake. The roof is held by 37 earthquake proof columns that are able to absorb the shaking caused, and would not affect the stadium structure if an earthquake occurred. SoFi Stadium opened in 2020 and cost over $5 billion dollars, a hefty price tag. However, this stadium is a highly impressive building that aims to give fans the best experience possible and has been designed to be safe given its proximity to nearby fault lines. I would love to return to this stadium one day to see an NFL game.
I met some fellow sports fans during my tour of SoFi stadium from the USA and England and ended up sharing a ride to Dodger Stadium with a guy from Chicago. He was a Cubs fan, and they were in town to play the Dodgers. This was my first time at an LA Dodgers game and the atmosphere was amazing. Live sports in America really keep you entertained from start to finish by providing lots of fan interaction, stats, food and merchandise. This was a great end to my first day.
On Monday 17th April I visited the campus of UCLA. Founded in 1919, UCLA receives the most college applications than any university in the world. Each year, it sets a new record. Did you know the Internet started at UCLA in 1969? The first Internet transmission was sent from UCLA to Stanford University. However, after the transmission was sent, the computer sending it broke down. Notable UCLA alumni include Hollywood actor James Dean, and Jim Morrison of The Doors. The image above shows me pictured with the Bruin Statue. This statue was unveiled in 1984 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the UCLA Alumni Association. The impressive Bruin weighs over 2 tons! Baseball star and civil rights leader, Jackie Robinson, is another UCLA alumni. On the 15th of April, 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier in Major League Baseball when he strode out to first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. This important moment is celebrated each year on Jackie Robinson Day. At UCLA, Robinson was a star in four sports - baseball, football, basketball and track and field.
On Tuesday 18th April I travelled from LA to San Diego on a Greyhound bus, a journey of around two and a half hours. I enjoyed the drive to San Diego, checking out the scenery and enjoying a short nap. My first impressions of San Diego were that it is very different from LA. It is smaller and has more parks and open spaces. The city is located in Southern California and sits around 20 miles from the border with Mexico. San Diego is home to several military bases, dating back to the early 20th century when the US Navy established a base there. The Coast Guard has a base on San Diego Bay, and the US Marines have installations at Miramar and Camp Pendleton. The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Midway is a museum and tourist attraction. Built just after WWII, the Midway served the US Navy during the Cold War era and was decommissioned in 1992.
Design Camp at High Tech High - April 19 to 21
High Tech High (HTH) opened in September 2000 as a small public charter school which initially served around 450 students. Today, HTH has evolved into an integrated network of sixteen charter schools serving approximately 6,350 students in grades K-12 across four campuses. HTH is a world leader in providing project-based learning (PBL). They have developed their own models and strategies to help guide students through the PBL process with the aim of engaging a diverse range of learners in deeper learning endeavours. High Tech High aims to bring together academic studies and creative practices, the mind and the hands, to help students think critically, creatively and deeply. In 2015, a feature length documentary about High Tech High was released called 'Most Likely to Succeed'.
- Day 1 agenda
- Session 1 - Empathise and Define, empathy and community are at the heart of PBL at High Tech High. In this session we will engage with a variety of strategies to get to know yourself better as an educator and the people you work with (students and colleagues). We will leave this session ready to conduct empathy interviews and practice strategies to help build community
- Empathy interview of High Tech High students and staff
- Session 2 - Define and Ideate, in this session we will define our motivations and intentions for the classroom and develop a first draft of an Educator's Impact Statement. We will practise strategies to generate new project ideas both collaboratively and individually and understand the importance of rapid ideation of project ideas
One strategy we practiced today was rapid ideation. This means to generate lots of ideas in a short amount of time. The idea next would be to choose some of the ideas to develop further. To help us generate ideas we deferred judgment on the quality of the ideas and instead focused on quantity. In groups of 3, we followed a simple mantra - 'Say it, write it, stick it'. We took turns to say our ideas, and ideas were captured as brief headlines, one idea per sticky note. You can see my teams ideation in the images below along with part two of this task where we sorted the ideas into most engaging to less engaging. I enjoyed this time to collaborate with new people, share ideas and think critically about our practice.
The HTH Graduate School of Education sits next to High Tech elementary school at Point Loma in San Diego. This school opened in 2015 and was the 13th school in the High Tech High school network. The mission of High Tech Elementary is to create classrooms where students achieve more than they think possible, becoming active contributors to building a better world and teachers can fulfil their highest aspirations. Their goal is to disrupt educational inequities by supporting students’ physical, social-emotional, and intellectual well-being.
Educator impact statement
On day one we were asked to write an educator impact statement. This statement includes some characteristics that are important for us as educators and the impact we aim to have on our students. Here is my first draft:
I am an innovative and compassionate educator who designs transformational learning experiences for all of my students so that they can contribute positively to the future of planet Earth.
Day one takeaways
- Our mission this week is to learn how to design experiences that increase student engagement and deeper learning
- Defined what makes a transformative learning experience
- Conducted an empathy interview of a teacher and a High Tech High student
- High Tech High student feedback for teachers, 'know your students', 'teach them to teach themselves' and 'build personal connections'
- Day 2 agenda
- Session 3 - Analyse and dissect HTH PBL models, use HTH Project Puzzles to dissect and analyse the structures and rhythms of thoughtfully designed projects
- Transformative spaces tour - an interactive, student led tour of a HTH secondary school
- Session 4 - Focused ideation and project draft, practise strategies for efficient ideating and organisation of a first draft of a project using the HTH project essentials poster
The main focus of day 2 was to develop a project idea using the PBL Deeper Learning Kaleidoscope (pictured right). The Kaleidoscope is a scaffold to help teachers design transformative learning experiences. We worked in groups to collaboratively develop a project idea we had chosen using various design strategies. One strategy we used was called 'Yes, and...'. This ideation protocol involved each member of the group sharing their idea and then receiving feedback on community partners that could be included in the project, things students could make, resources to support students, questions that students could explore and suggestions on how student work could be exhibited.
what impACT DO EXHIBITIONS HAVE ON STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND DEEPER LEARNING?
On day two we explored ways for students to share their learning with the community. We were asked to identify the characteristics of a successful exhibition, people you could invite, and to think about how students might be impacted by having their work displayed publicly. Teachers at HTH believe in giving student work a life beyond the classroom so it can be enjoyed by many different types of audience. I enjoyed viewing student work during my tour of the high school and you can see some of the work in images and video on this website.
a well designed project and a well designed exhibition requires something from every student in the class
Day two takeaways
- I was impressed by how much student work was displayed around the school
- Student work was artistic, creative and thoughtful about current issues
- The student ambassadors that led the tour of High Tech High School were incredibly mature, articulate and positive about their school
- High Tech High students spoke about needing to take initiative at school and being very self-driven
- Students have great respect for their teachers and even call them by their first name
- Teachers trust students to leave campus to visit shops and sit in a local park at lunch time
- Day 3 agenda
- Session 5 - test draft of project and engagement test
- Transformative spaces tour - a tour of High Tech Elementary school led by student ambassadors
- Session 6 - gallery walk critique and project tuning
- Closing session - Promises of learning
Each morning we were reminded of the PBL Design Process and essential question that was driving our learning - 'How do we design experiences that increase student engagement and deeper learning'. The focus of the morning session was to work on the first draft of our transformative project we were designing. We were then encouraged to reflect on the project and the transformative characteristics we had chosen. This reflection asked us to be specific in how the transformative characteristic was visible in the development of my project. A highlight of design camp was the regular check ins with our camp buddy. This was a teacher we worked with everyday on our ideas and shared ideas and feedback with. My buddy was Barb from Pressman Academy, an independent school in Los Angeles. I appreciated my connection with Barb and the many valuable conversations we had over the week. When giving feedback we used the KSH approach to ensure feedback was Kind, Specific and Helpful.
One of the highlights of day 3 was the student led tour of High Tech Elementary school at Point Loma. The students led us with confidence and enjoyed sharing many positives about being a student there. I was very excited to step inside the technology room and meet Riley, the STEM teacher. I appreciated this chance to make a connection with Riley and I am hoping we can communicate about STEM and PBL in the future. The technology room was a flexible and creative space for students to design and build in. The students I spoke to enjoyed STEM learning due to its hands-on nature.
Whilst walking around the school I was struck by the vast amount of student work that was on display. Student work was hung on just about every wall and from every ceiling. It felt like walking through an art gallery where the exhibits were continually refreshed and updated. One specific piece of student work that excited me was a calendar of the planets in our solar system (pictured here). This calendar had been made by year 1 students to answer questions like 'what is space?', 'where are we in space?', and 'what does it take to explore space together?'. The calendar is a final product that combined students' love of art and science. Groups of students worked together to research facts about the planets and then created scientifically accurate illustrations.
We continued to work on our project idea in the afternoon session. Two learning activities stood out for me: the project impact statement and the project handout. The project impact statement asked us to write down what students would do in the project and to define the purpose and impact of their actions. Example: Students will help increase awareness on water quality issues that most impact San Diegans to inspire change in water quality standards. The project handout asked us to think what was at the heart of the project, who the project would impact and how we would exhibit student work. We then used this information to organise the project into a PBL Calendar of two week cycles. A two week cycle encouraged us to chunk learning in a series of benchmarks that lead to a final product and exhibition.
At the end of the final day we stood in a circle and shared a promise of how we would take something we had learnt back to our schools to make a positive impact on our students. This was an incredible learning experience and I was sad it had ended. However, I felt incredibly positive about the work I had done, the ideas I created and what the future would hold.
Final day highlights
- The tour of the elementary school was fascinating. It was a privilege to step inside the school, see learning spaces, view student work and be guided by elementary school students
- Collaborating with Design Camp teachers on project ideas. I appreciated the chance to share my ideas and receive constructive feedback. This helped to refine my ideas and figure out next steps
- Connecting with new people, sharing stories, experiences and teaching practices over lunch
Space and Science in Los Angeles - April 22 to 23
On Saturday 22nd April I took the Greyhound bus back to Los Angeles. I arrived around lunch time and after a quick bite to eat I was back out on the road. I had two places I wanted to visit today: the California Science Center and Griffith Observatory. The main reason for visiting the California Science Center was to see the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The Endeavour completed 25 space missions including the first service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. It also carried important parts to help build the International Space Center. I was struck by the impressive scale of the space shuttle and by the patchwork of more than 24,000 individual tiles on the shuttle that provided it with thermal protection. The tiles protected the shuttle during de-orbit when it is travelling around 25 times faster than the speed of sound and temperatures on the shuttle can reach several thousand degrees. Part of the process of making the tiles is taking them to the largest microwave oven in America in Sunnyvale, California.
An iconic Los Angeles landmark, Griffith Observatory is located on the southern slope of Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park. The observatory is designed in an Art Deco style architecture and opened in 1935. Since then over 8 million people have looked through the 12-inch Zeiss telescope, more than any other telescope on Earth. Griffith Observatory has appeared in many films and TV shows, such as Rebel without a Cause and La La Land. Griffith Observatory is located in an area of natural beauty with stunning views over the city of Los Angeles. It is a place I had longed to visit for many years and it did not disappoint. I enjoyed walking around the observatory, taking in the views of the city and the Hollywood Hills. Inside the observatory were fascinating exhibits about our solar system and beyond. Touching pieces of Mars and the Moon were other highlights of my visit.
I spent my final few hours at Santa Monica beach walking and reflecting on the extraordinary week I had just had. I had time explore a book called 'From Teaching to Thinking' by Ann Pelo, an American educator and program consultant. In a podcast episode featuring Ann she spoke glowingly about the Australian Early Years Learning Framework which includes the three fundamental pillars of children's belonging, being and becoming. Further, I was struck by Ann's thoughts on a narrow view of teaching in terms of instruction towards a pre-determined end versus the teacher as a responsive, self-aware thinker who listens closely to what children are saying and being fully present in the moment with children as they explore their big ideas, pursuits and questions. This encouraged me to think about what I can offer to help children dive deeper into their thinking. I left LA feeling excited about what I had learnt and seen and how I can incorporate new ideas into my teaching and learning at Ravenswood.
Highlights of my Ravenswood Fellowship
- Design Camp at High Tech High was amazing professional development
- Collaborating with a diverse group of educators and making new connections
- Learning new teaching and learning practices to help develop PBL at Ravenswood
- Meeting, and being inspired by, High Tech High staff and students
- Visiting the Space Shuttle Endeavour
- Learning about science and space at Griffith Observatory
PLP Expo Update
- What has happened since I finished the Fellowship in April?
- How has the PBL Design Camp impacted my teaching practice?
- What are my next steps?
Aim: Design for Deeper Learning - teach with trust, the offering of freedom and responsibility (make possible the transformative power of education)
NEW Focus Area - Empathy (empathy was identified as a key characteristic in transformative learning experiences)
"EMPATHY IS AT THE HEART OF DESIGN" - IDEO
Learning Context - Year 6 STEM project, 'How can robots help people at home?'
- Students had to conduct an empathy interview with someone at home
- Aims of the interview were to develop active listening skills, to ask questions that evoke stories and explore emotions, and to uncover an authentic problem that could be solved
- Students shared this empathy data with their STEM groups and selected one empathy map to design a solution for
- Students shared their projects at the end of term 3
Key Strategy - Empathy Maps, develop empathy skills to better understand people and their needs
An empathy map is a collaborative visualisation used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user. It externalises knowledge about users in order to 1) create a shared understanding of user needs, and 2) aid in decision making - Nielsen Norman Group
Format
Traditional empathy maps are split into 4 quadrants (Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels), with the user or persona in the middle. Empathy maps provide a glance into who a user is as a whole and are not chronological or sequential.
Benefits of empathy mapping
- Removes bias from the design process
- Uncover user needs that the user themselves may not be aware of
- Guides us towards meaningful innovation
Student empathy map samples - Year 6
Student projects
- Robot basketball trainer
- A robot that does household chores
- Robot cook
- A small robot vacuum cleaner that fits into hard to reach places
- A robot that distracts a dog so it does not ride on top of a robot vacuum cleaner
- A humming bird robot, a type of social robot that can tutor children
- A robot to help lawyers summarise information to free up time for them
- A social robot to help elderly relatives with reminders and appointments
- A robot with a tongue to clean hard to reach places
Empathy Mapping Feedback
- I was impressed as this was the first time students had conducted empathy interviews and then made empathy maps
- Students reached out to family members and family friends
- They asked good questions!
- Students identified meaningful problems
- They returned to class with authentic ideas for their Home Robot STEM project
Overall project feedback
- Students showed impressive communication and collaboration skills
- Student ideas were creative and meaningful
- Some very engaging videos were made that showcased student creativity and skills in storytelling and video editing
- A wide variety of prototyping methods were used, including role play, storyboards, sketches, digital artwork, craft props, 3D printing, origami and robotics
- Students had fun! They laughed, they smiled, they were engaged, they were plorking! Engaged in playful work (playfulness with a specific focus on work) - Dan Castro, Edinburgh College of Art
Next Steps
- Embedding/aligning MBE strategies with the PBL Deeper Learning Kaleidoscope
- Adapting the Kaleidoscope for younger students in P-2
- Further examine elements of the Deeper Learning Kaleidoscope by zooming in and zooming out of the specific practices to capture the actual work that goes into accomplishing them
- Increase student agency in the design of STEM projects, such as through co-constructing a rubric with students
- Reflect critically on the Deeper Learning Kaleidoscope and my teaching to think about the effect on student learning
- Reflect further on the Fellowship to better understand the learning experiences and to create recommendations for future projects
Credits
- All images on this website are original photographs taken by myself
- Music in videos by David Cutter Music https://www.davidcuttermusic.com/