Cross-Cultural Storytelling with Wearable Electronics
with Ploy, Tina, Nertinia
Note: This page is still being updated, final version of this documentation will be live by February 1, 2023
The Beginning
“Teams in the 2022 TETL Course will work on a semester-long design project with Allergic to Salad to design, build, and test tangible learning technologies and curriculum for teaching electronics and computing to middle school students.”
This is how we got to meet Stacey Ornstein, the founder and executive director of Allergic to Salad or Rad Labs. In our first meeting with her, we had an interview session where she told us the story of how Allergic to Salad came about and the message behind it. It gave us an insight into how extracurricular learning can be integrated into the dynamic of different learner groups in New York Schools. Following is the link to the Interview Analysis that I did in order to pick out the important aspects we were challenged to work with.
The team forms over a shared idea
I teamed up with Ploy, Tina, and Nertinia as we wanted to work at the intersection of electronics and cultural storytelling. It felt important for us to design learning principles where we could not only demystify technology but get young learners to feel empowered, and to create based on their stories and cultural backgrounds. Our message was to use technology as a tool to represent yourself and tell your story, rather than playing within the limits of existing tech. It was also important that cultural awareness was built up in a classroom full of young learners so that they can be inspired by the stories of their peers.
We decided to take inspiration from a previous year’s project and build on the features that worked well. Following is the Figjam board that contains all our brainstorming and initial ideas up until Stacey’s next visit:
https://www.figma.com/file/wqkMAKQ2oU7tiQ9csGn7Af/Brainstorming?node-id=46%3A81
Our secondary research with annotated bibliographies can be found at the following link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MWXFt6bTIQQFvocjAvHfftWusfRTPdfnZ6eXj-91-r8/edit?usp=sharing
The learning theories we wanted to work with were:
Social constructivism – where knowledge develops from how learners interact with each other, their culture, and society at large.
Cognitivism – where knowledge develops from how learners organize new information, in order to make connections to, build upon, and expand on existing knowledge and personal experiences.
Iteration 1:
Idea 1: Illustration page/ storybook page
The students will be given illustrated pages from a storybook that also has a description of a culturally significant character. This would serve as a resource for them to learn something new, and get inspired. The idea was to use that illustration as a basis for creating designs on a wearable or design a wearable to fit into the character of the story.
Idea 2: Character cards
Students will create a character card that represents their culture or have options to pick a character that instructors have prepared prior to class or draw their own character. On the card, students will write a story of their character, the character’s cultural background, and how their character connects to them.
Idea 3: Wearable costume pieces
Students will be provided with a basic wearable frame made of wire, a vest, or strips of fabric to attach cultural components to.
All these projects will have a lesson on basic circuits to light up their projects with colorful LEDs.
Our slides from this presentation can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FN6yQSfI386_5AY521wvfsgMu-xYGgu9wFgyDU7_AwY/edit?usp=sharing
The full feedback documentation from Stacey and post-reflection can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aPG3CC1SK2MpstWOG2et91E_d2sd12KK1hEiPwBwR_w/edit?usp=sharing
Iteration 2: Playtesting with Instructors
Based on feedback we received from the first iteration, we created a lesson plan and prepared materials to play-test with the Allergic to Salad instructors and other students in class.
Decisions made from feedback:
- Simplified the basic circuit lesson
- Had design components prepared for the students
- Changed the materials used for the hands-on activities
- Replaced glue guns with regular glues and glue dots
- Replaced the felt with foam sheets that work better with glue
Iteration 3 (Final Design): Playtesting with Students
The activity followed a lesson on a basic circuit to light up an LED, where it is used in the technology we see all around us and going through a worksheet on what they learned.
Slides for this lesson: Click here
Worksheet on circuits: Click here
Surprisingly, all of our students were able to understand the LED circuit very quickly; however, we could not motivate all of them to talk about their work during the sharing and evaluation session. Based on our observation, we found that students have varied personalities which makes them focus on different parts of the course. Some students were hesitant to start working on the worksheets and did not want to get the answers wrong.
While the students were enthusiastic about building the LED circuit, we had trouble with the stabilities of battery holders and the batteries, which made four of us constantly troubleshoot at all times during the activities.
For the Cultural Learning part, most students didn’t spend time to consider the questions on the culture worksheets but just roughly fill them out or did it after they finish the wristband. Many students tended to pick their favorite elements from the pre-cut shapes to put on their wristbands.
Due to time constraints, we had to combine the sharing and evaluation sessions. We found that the students did not speak much about their design choices but spent more time, in the end, finishing their design and filling out the evaluation form.
Evalution and observations
Evaluation form link: Click here
All evaluation answers filled up by students: Click Here
The evaluation forms had been summarized in the chart below which shows that students were interested in circuit building and even wanted to learn more complex things about that, such as adding more LEDs or adding other components to their wristbands. However, students didn’t have too much to say about the culture which indicates that they have no idea/are not aware of the culture they are expressing. But students still wanted to build larger things like masks or house models with lights. As summarized in the chart, students didn’t have time to share their work and seemed to not want to talk spontaneously. We saw that if we asked, students would answer, and the other students would also react, but if we didn’t ask, they would only talk to their friends or just didn’t speak at all.
Final Thoughts:
Final presentation: Click here
Higher level Curriculum for this program: Click Here
This was personally an exciting project to work on. Getting insight from Stacey and her instructors about teaching students skills for lifelong learning beyond the classroom was very helpful. The highlight was getting to playtest with the middle school students, interacting with them, and seeing all of them happily walk away with the wearables they created. I was also very grateful to have had incredible teammates throughout, and together we were able to iterate through the various design challenges and land on something we are all excited to continue working with. Finally, a very special thanks to our professors Benny and Kayla from whom we were able to gain so many valuable lessons and guidance throughout this journey!
We are looking forward to extending our work beyond the classroom and finding new possibilities for our project to grow and be implemented in a learning environment.