Post-its and Pearson

So this week was week 2 of spring break for Kids Team, which means I instead focused on something else that I am working on for my internship: collecting, organizing, and analyzing all of the ideas Kids Team has ever produced.
Kids Team has been having weekly meetings on Wednesday since September of this school year, and has created many ideas (mainly for a specific vocabulary app, but a little bit for various people along the way). I have been going through each of the documents from each session and writing each individual idea on a post-it note.

After I am done writing all of the ideas out on post-it notes, I am going to sort grouping similar ideas together, and seeing what kind of ideas and groups occur from this categorization (this technique is known as affinity diagramming).
Of course, I color-coded this process. Each month got a different color, which proceeds in rainbow order, to see if any patterns emerge. The gray post-its are organization and management notes - all of the various things the adults have learned about how Kids Team should be run. And yes, I have only gotten through yellow so far, which should give you an extent of the sheer volume of ideas produced, as well as how much I still have to do, even before the sorting process begins.

Also, due to Navya's comment last week: "I know it's rather late to ask this question, but I realized I'm not entirely sure. What exactly is Pearson and Kids Team? Is this a school or a day care or something like that?" I realized I hadn't ever properly explained what Pearson and Kids Team was, so I'd thought I'd clarify a little:

Pearson is an educational company - they make lots of learning tools for K-12 students, including textbooks, ebooks, and learning apps. Kids Team is a codesign process they introduced last September in order to allow children to design with adults on technology meant for children. In particular, a larger portion of Kids Team so far has been spent on creating a vocabulary app for young children. Kids Team allows the eight children to be equal creative design partners, and they have been involved in the whole process, from the initial idea of the app until now (when the prototype is being developed).

I'm sorry for any uncertainty or misconceptions anyone had about what Pearson or Kids Team is. Please don't hesitate to ask any questions if anything remains unclear!

Arizona SciTech Festival

Hello everyone!
So yesterday (Friday, March 13th) was the Arizona SciTech Festival, where I helped (with four of the Kids Team children and several of the adult Kids Team members) to operate the Kids Team booth, complete with media
videos of Kids Team, a station for showing a Kids Team technique called Layered Elaboration (where transparent sheets are put one on top of the other as other people modify ideas), and a prize wheel (prizes included hex bugs, little flashlights, magnifying glasses, and stickers).
Besides us, there were lots of cool booths to visit; there was a 3D printer, an alligator, a petting zoo, robot fighting, a photo booth, karate people teaching children how to break boards, rockets, a man making balloon animals, a guy making ice cream with liquid nitrogen (he was really popular as you might imagine), and lots of other things. The liquid nitrogen guy also put on a little display of what
liquid nitrogen can do, which was fun. Among other things, he froze (and then shattered) a plastic ball, made a fog machine, and, of course, made ice cream.

This was one of the rockets I saw yesterday: we were all very curious as to how the maker managed to construct the top cone out of the Pringles can...

And remember that Kids Team sign I drew for decoration? Well, apparently it was a little too good because I now seem to be the go-to person for artsy signage:

This is what I get for liking fancy letters.

Serious Play

The newsletter, in all its glory.

First off, I just wanted to show you all part of the email newsletter I designed (which I was essentially told to "make pretty"), because it is finally done and I am a tad too proud of it. Also, if anyone ever needs to make an email newsletter, I highly recommend using Microsoft publisher if you have it - it's lovely.

Now on to more serious matters, or rather, Lego Serious Play.
I had never heard of this technique until a week ago and the name is the first thing that struck me: yes, it's oxymoronic, but, yes, it does sum up the idea of the technique. Lego Serious Play is essentially using legos help people more effectively explain, show, and discover their feelings about certain things, usually through metaphors.
In fact, the whole idea revolves around metaphors and abstract thinking and tends to work very well with adults. But we were trying to use Lego Serious Play to get the Kids Team children to show and describe specific feelings.
Which was a little more difficult.
The children didn't really like the idea of using legos to build metaphors for feelings. They wanted to build something more exciting, like robots or motorcycles.
But overall, the children were better at Lego Serious Play than many of us expected.

The next two weeks are spring break for Kids Team, so I apoligize ahead of time for any possible lulls in discoing animals and random rainbows. Although, we are putting on a booth at a SciTech festival next Friday and half of the children will be there, so that should be exciting.

Anyway, hope you all have a lovely week!