The Journey to the Problem

Meeting the Client

Before I knew that I wanted to kick teachers out of their schools, I had to get to know them as learners with needs. I needed to put names to faces and figure out what the faces wanted.

The Survey

In order to identify what our teachers needed, a survey was conducted at the beginning of the project in order to get a rough idea of how comfortable the modern teacher is with technology. I narrowed the information down to the largest high school group I could find, English teachers who comfortably used the Google Education Suite

The Interview

I also interviewed some school band directors over Zoom in order to get a more in-depth picture of how teachers may view and treat classroom technology. They were big fans of technology in general, but in the classroom they needed everything to run smoothly first and foremost.

Excel Screen capture

Screen capture of teacher interview

The Resulting "Client" and His Needs

Jim Mothie, English Teacher

After combining the data from the survey and some of the key takeaways from my interview we were left with the persona of a Mr. Jim Mothie. Jim's a high school English teacher who likes to use technology but thinks it should primarily facilitate learning. He's very familiar with the Google educational suite and his students all have their own laptops. Armed with this persona, we have analyzed our learners and can define their need. At this point I determined that our teachers needed exposure to English content-specific technology that, once learned, could seamlessly integrate into student instruction in a way that facilitated student learning.

"our teachers needed exposure to English content-specific technology that, once learned, could seamlessly integrate into student instruction in a way that facilitated student learning."

Content Analysis and Framing

Content Analysis

Now that we know our client and their needs, it's time to start researching a solution that aligned with a close ISTE standard. I decided on

Designer 5b: Design authentic learning activities that align with content area standards and use digital tools and resources to maximize active, deep learning.

Authentic learning activities take place either in real world situations or with a focus on real-world application.

Active, Deep Learning is content mastery gained while simultaneously building a student's overall perseverance.

At first I thought the best way to solve for the standard and the problem statement would be to find some tools designed for English teachers. That would be the most direct way to solve their immediate problem. The problem with that, is that technology tends to come in and out of fashion. What I had seen in my research was that articles on how to find and evaluate technologies tended to stay pretty relevant. I'd also read some papers on tolerating ambiguity. Combining those two things, I decided it would be a better idea to figure out a way to enable teachers to go out and find technology tools that provide for real-world scenarios where active learning is occurring.

Since I was throwing out the idea of finding English-Specific tools for that group, I also decided to shift from an English focus to just a focus on specific content areas in general for my problem statement. I gave it another look, illustrated below (you may want to open the image in a new tab to zoom in.)

5-Why's Analysis - Begins with initial problem statement "Teachers are not using content-specific technology unless it's easy to implement." The analysis ends with "Teachers haven't found relevant content-specific technology."

The Problem

Now that we've taken a good look at our learners, their needs, some relevant research, and the standards we ascribe to as technology leaders, we're ready to plainly state the problem we'll be solving for.

Teachers haven't found relevant content-specific technology that addresses a learning component.

Solve the problem with me.

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