What do teachers think about the value of #designthinking #ak12dc

Here is what 85 teachers valued most about the design thinking process they learned over the course of five months @AK12DC.  With the help of a facilitator from Stanford’s d.school we took them through the entire design thinking process.  They engaged in empathy, they developed point-of-view statements, they ideated their POVs, they prototyped their ideas and tested them with some users.  The Wordle below illustrates how they responded to the question: which 2-3 skills or activities from the January 14 Design Challenge Workshop or the March 21-22 Design Summit have been of most value or benefit to you?  Teachers learned so much by gaining empathy with the users they interviewed at their schools.  The eleven schools in Atlanta K12 Design Challenge selected different users to interview.  Some interviewed students, teachers, parents, or outside community members.  Regardless of who they interviewed, a great deal was learned about the challenge a school’s design team wanted to address by gaining empathy with their user.  In schools, to solve our most challenging problems, we need to go directly to our “users” and learn about their experience at our school.