Advisory Board Meeting 2 and insights into assessments and refining storytelling

Last Monday we had our second Advisory Board meeting guided by this: [slide deck]

We started with a check in and sharing of: thorn (something bothering you), seed (something good you are nurturing), bloom (something making you happy now!)

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  Wiliwili Tree (deciduous so half of year has no leaves), seeds, and blossoms

  Next, a list of upcoming community events were shared. Feedback from these workshops will inform the final revisions of the kits:

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  Above: slide from meeting slide deck

  We spent a good amount of time reviewing one sample workshop activity, Hawaiian Solar Bots, with all its resource content. After creating the first draft of instuctional materials for the Hawaiian Solar Bots, I learned that what works best for me is to develop the full detailed lesson plan first, and then distill the information into more abridged formats all the way down to a postcard and a 1.5 minute video. Each activity will have a range of instructional materials including: a postcard, comic hand-out, detailed lesson plan for instructors, 3 minute video (Youtube) and 1.5 minute video (Instagram).

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  above: instructional postcard

•  Instructional Comic Postcard. There was general approval of a postcard for each activity: several sample photos of the activity on one side and cartoon instructions on the other. We discussed how showing more than one example on each activity postcard was very important to encourage free design exploration. We also discussed how it will be important to elevate the importance of failures in explorations as learning pivot moments. Journaling can be very valuable in documenting, elevating the design process, and in uplifting fails as essential to that process. As the board reviewed this postcard, Lisa Whitsitt suggested adding a simple graphic representing a circuit as a circle to all the print materials to serve as a quick visual explanation of how a circuit works and how the wires all need to be connected. I will be adding that to the materials in the coming weeks.

• Comic Handouts. We next reviewed this longer handout version for students. There was general approval of the design. Skye Haraga suggested that perhaps students capture their learning curve on the back of the story card. (We did not determine what that might look like yet). This idea grew out of our discussion of how we might playfully capture the ups and down confidence archs we move through as makers.

  Kea’a Davis suggested we explore replacing the words “power, weakness, and resistance” on the Pokémon story card with place-based Hawaiian framework vocabulary. This vocabulary adjustment will be the next thing revised before the cards are use in the prototyping community workshops.

•  Lesson plan Full teacher guide. This is a google doc and quite detailed. It was asked in the meeting if this type of document is useful for teachers. Those of us who are in education shared that google docs are a standard way for lessons to be shared. This one is quite long, but K-12 and informal educators are used to picking and chosing what buckets of information are useful to them. Such documents are also useful tools, sometimes essential tools, to convince administrators that a STEAM project address the rigours of Common Core Standards and NGSS Standards.

• Long Video. This 3 video minute video is posted on Instagram right now. I aim to edit it to have a local student’s voice before posting it to YouTube.

  I will create a secondary video for each lesson that is 1.5 minutes and these will be on Instagram. I really like the videos of Maui Lei Maker Ikaika Blackburn. Sample: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4KCLyprBFm/ ) Matt Ortiz of Wodden Wave suggested https://www.instagram.com/thedadlab/ as a great model of good Instagram instructional.

  Mo’olelo: For this activity, I am sharing the very familiar mo'oleleo of Maui capturing capturing the sun, but I would like to include a few for each lesson. The advisory board will be helping me identify a few others to include. I have included this ʻŌiwi TV video, Why Māui Snared The Sun, in the lesson plan.

We had a discussion in the Board meeting about the importance of collecting and sharing more than one mo'olelo. By including multiple mo’olelos stories with each activity, we can encourage the sharing of stories and highlight the overlaps of stories. "Stories are not like lei flowers or seeds on a string, they can overlap and feed into each other. How might this be shown visually?"-Lisa Whitsitt

 

prototype assessment tool

LEI ASSESSMENT TOOL LEI AS DATA This is a prototype of a playful pre and post assessment tool which uses locally sourced seeds, flowers, and leaves strung into leis to complete the statement “I am a …”. At the beginning of the workshop, participants string a mini lei using seeds and flowers representing how they view themselves: artist, engineer, scientist, culture carrier, etc. They add a spacer that says “before” and hang it on a board for later use. After the workshop journey, participants repeat the exercise on the same lei strand, creating a pre and post assessment on the same lei string. After I take a photo of all participant strands, they can add more flowers and seeds randomly to their lei to create a full lei to take home. This idea grew for two sources. First, in the @purple_maia Ka Maka ʻĪnana program, Kumu Kamuela Enos shared a mo’olelo of leis being offered to aliʻi. Elements included were carefully selected from plants from mauka to makai and were offered as a snapshot of a single ahupua’a health. This is such a beautiful concept to think of leis as encoding health. The second inspiration is a tool that was used to survey modes of transport to the ACM International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction conference in Cork, Ireland, 2024. PIeces of different shapes of wood and cardboard were marked as representing different modes of transportation. Participants were invited to select the appropriate shapes/materials representing the modes of transportation they used to travel to conference and the distance they traveled. Each particular added their data to a strand of twine and posted to a display board.

Below are photos of the prototype and the Advisory Board feedback.

 

 

Matt- "A lei has a repeating pattern and these short sections don't feel like a lei. How can a participant get a preview of their completed repeat pattern lei at this stage of pre assessment stringing? Might you take a picture and create a repeating pattern image and then print out a lei sticker? Might it be their name tag somehow?" 

Skye- "Does a participant string only one of each?

To address this question I will add to the heading prompt “I am a…” (select as many as you feel)”

Skyle-"Does a participant string more of a seed or flower if they feel the lean towards more of one of these titles? Is this a percentage based design?"

No, this is not percentage based, so I need to say only one of each.

Lisa - "How do you in the moment create an image of a whole lei from just a lei segment? What is the technology to do so easily?"

With that last question posed, David Okada dashes away from the zoom camera and then came back into view with some materials and created a prototype on the fly of how to make a complete circular lei from survey segents using two mirrors.

 

 

Above images: David Okada’s on- the-fly meeting prototype and sketches for using two angled mirrors to create the illusion of a completed lei from just one pre-assessment segment! WOW!

We all greatly enjoyed this moment of innovative design that may well drive people to actually want to participate in the pre and post assessment activity.

Next we discussed the three other activities, specifically the millifluidic tool activity now renamed Mo'o Shapeshifter/a Water Sensor Tool and the lesson plan for it here: Mo’o Shapeshifter/ a Water Sensor Tool lesson plan. This activity now blends conversations of millifluidic soil/water sensor tools, ahupua’a, and mo’o (lizard deities). Dr. Kiana Frank highlighted in our last meeting the imporance of mo’o in balancing the pH of wai (water) and in protecting wai (water). I am grateful to Dr. Kiana Frank for illuminating this pathway and for sharing mo’olelo to bring these elements together. I will be referencing quotes of hers in the book "Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future" that speak to the pH balancing role mo'o play. A few other mo'o mo'olelo resources will be shared for a range of grade levels.

 

Above is the activity as soley a color mixing device. In the lesson plan, there is a pathway to include pH water or soil testing. As an extension project, I have included the resources for people to participate in the Dear Body of Water project: using a Hawai'i specific postcard

 

LIMU (SEAWEED) PAPER 

 

Image generated by DALL.E.2 for below Mo'olelo of making paper airplanes from seaweed

I am pivoting the seaweed bioplastic activity to focus instead on a seaweed paper making activity informed by my dad’s childhood stories of living on Maui during WWII.

At this link, one can read David Okada’s Mo’olelo of making seaweed nori sheets during WWII on Maui. This will be included in the lesson plan resources. Also included will be instructions on how to properly collect limu. And guide images for limu identification.

The activity will include other limu mo’olelo resources, including the Kumulipo, the Hawaiian creation chant which shares that limu was an important organism of first creation.

In the last 10 minutes, we discussed ways to reframe what the learning experience is truly like. It is not a continual upward line where one increases in confidence of skills and knowledge. It is one in which there are dips and troughs that should be welcomed and anticipated. How do we invite students to embrace and understand the changes they feel as learners, so that they have perseverance and get excited about challenges and how they will continually change in their learning paths? Another question asked was ways to anchor activities into existing programming and asked how can these activities draw into what people are already doing? Our next gathering will be in late Jully when I can share back learnings from the workshops in community conducted from April to June. A final report will be shared in August.

 

an image rendered by DALL.E.2 to accompany David Okada's stories about the scarcity of paper and nori on Maui that led to people making sheets of nori from the limu seaweed found on the shores. We will be exploring nori sheet making for STEAM activities.

A sharing of work-in-progress has been part of this journey. Last week I shared this project as the Keynote speaker at the Second Annual Maker and STEAM Symposium [slide deck] and have submitted it as a paper proposal for the Biodesign Challenge Symposium in June.

The next lab notes will be from the community workshops. The ones conducted this year are buiding upon the initial seeds of workshops last year and will help finalize the lesson resources.