Sunday, March 22, 2015

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!

6 comments:

  1. Is the Vocabulary App out yet, and if so, what is its name? I'd love to take a look at it.

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    1. Unfortunately, it is not yet - prototypes are still being developed, so it may take a little while before everything gets straightened out. I'm not sure it even has a name yet, to be honest.

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  2. So how do kids get chosen for Kids Team? Good luck with all those post-it notes!

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    1. Last summer they held open houses to inform families about the opportunities, and then chose kids that were interested. I don't know the specifics, but my guess is that they chose a small range of ages and half girls and half boys to try to get a diverse sample, but it might have just worked out that way.
      And thank you!

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  3. I see you are doing lots of gathering and organizing data. Are you also involved in the prototyping or design of the app itself? It seems that there are many parts involved in making this final product.

    Good luck with sorting!

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    1. The design of the app is actually usually what Kids Team sessions are focused on, so yes? I'm part of a team that helps with the design planning, but I'm not involved in helping the art team on the actual designing process or prototype, although I do get to sit in on consumer testing of prototypes. Hopefully that answered your question.
      Also, thank you!

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