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    • Cohort 22
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Delgado - Design Process
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Design Process

Informational text on your Initial Analysis and Prototyping.   Be sure to describe your audience and their needs.

Step 1: Understanding my learners 

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f my students were going to set goals for themselves and learn from their challenges, they first had to believe in themselves.  This was an inspirational video I shared with them.  Hoping they would see how anything in life is possible if you put all your heart into it.  
My research was a pre-experimental study with a one-group pre-test/posttest design.  The convenience sample was my fourth grade classroom of 32 students.  Of the 32 students, 16 were English language learners, 2 had been identified as special ed., and 25 students had qualified for free or reduced lunch.  This was a four week long study in which 4th grade students were able to use Google Calendar as a digital tool to set and monitor learning goals. 
Of my 32 students, only 2 of them were proficient in math, four were in Basic, and the rest were Below Basic or Far Below Basic.  
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I knew I could do more, but I felt they were not interested in putting in the hard work.   I could sense a lack of motivation and some had acquired "learned helplessness".   This is when I thought about goal setting and pushing ourselves forward.  
We worked a lot around goal setting and distinguishing goals from short term and long term goals.  
I focused first around the positive,  we acknowledged and celebrated our strengths.  We also took a quiz to learn about the kind of learners we were, whether we were visual learners, auditory learners, or kinetic learners.  I borrowed and AVID binder from a teacher friend and used lots of the graphic organizers and tools.  If my students were going to set goals for themselves and learn from their challenges, they first had to believe in themselves.  This was an inspirational video I shared with them.  Hoping they would see how anything in life is possible if you put all your heart into it.  


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Research
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Support and Next Steps
This was an inspirational video I shared with my students.  Hoping they would see how anything in life is possible if you put all your heart into it.  
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Venturing out on our Journey with Technology

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Using a technology tool like Google Calendar was a beautiful experience.  Just the fact of having a personal email and a 1:1 chrome book ratio to every student felt important.  Students felt in control monitoring and making goals, but also making decisions that directly impacted their education.

Here is a short descriptive video I made at the completion of my research in the first trimester.  Please keep in mind this was one of my first videos.


​We need to understand the context of the learner, so that we can empower them.

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In my second trimester I learned about my learners or my audience through the SITE model.  I learned the major factors that are connected to the learner and that designers need to consider when designing a product.  The sociocultural subcontext, which considers the learner's motives and goals.  The Technical subcontext, which looks at the ways, tools, or techniques the learner can use to feel empowered and achieve their goals.  The Informational subcontext, which are the skills and knowledge learners will need to access the information in literacy and mediacy.  Learning this, made me think of how our education system is evolving.  The model of teaching in "one way fits all" is no longer possible.  Everybody is at different levels, we all have different interests, skills and motives in life.  There is more competition in everything, we need to train learners to be able to use and transfer skills in all directions.  We are not giving the kids the fish, we are teaching them how to fish.  

Thinking about the design for my prototype

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My logo Design

As I was thinking about my logo, I wanted to have the word "explorers" as part of it, because I wanted to connect with my actual school logo and to continue lifting our pride as a school.  I knew I wanted "tech or technology in it, because its part of my driving question and vision with my capstone.  
I first tried logomaker.com and I loved how easy it was and how fast I was able to see all the different examples.  When selecting certain logos or clip art, my options were limited.  I couldn't have a compass and a computer in the same design.  If I selected a computer, I couldn't pick an apple to represent education.  Overall, working with the different logo making platforms, opened my eyes to see many possibilities.  After playing with logos, lettering and colors for a few days, my designs and ideas began to narrow.  
One of my last options was using, LogoMakr.com and I loved it!, I liked how I had a little more control over my design with vectors.  I was able to play around with the fonts, the spacing and even the clip art.  I picked my logo to have blue and red which are primary colors.  Blue is one of the colors of my school and red, I picked because it almost always catches ones attention. As I researched popular logos, I noticed the red logos always caught my eye.  So, my logo was bound to have some red in it.  The lettering is very simple and easy to read.  I substituted the "O" in explorers with the compass and I changed the spelling a little to make it a little more eye catchy and interesting.  When I had my design down, and I knew that was the one, I paid my daughter $20 so she could re-draw a clear and clean version using her design program.  I am very happy with my logo design because it contains all the elements I wanted to represent and feel proud of.  
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