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I worked as a consultant for the White Mountain School in northern New Hampshire to understand their educational culture and design a new maker space to assist and accelerate the actualization of the WMS vision with the design and development of a new inquiry and innovation space through 3 intensive work weeks.
Deliverables:
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Develop deep understanding of WMS through research and interviews
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Plan year 1 of innovation space: equipment, safety, project ideas
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Present findings to leadership and write an organized written report
White Mountain School Design Process:
Background Research:
In order to give good recommendations to the White Mountain School, I had to understand their culture. I poured through their published documents, looking at mission, vision, recruiting materials, and more. I also spend time in other maker spaces to compare their cultures with the layout of the space.
Ethnographic Methods:
After researching culture, I went and spoke with eleven key stakeholders at the White Mountain School. I asked about their visions for the school and for the new space, as well as their apprehensions. They confided in me things that would not come out during a board meeting, putting me in a position to synthesize their ideas and come up with a method to marry their grand vision with the day-to-day operations of the new maker space.
Synthesis:
Themes quickly emerged from the interviews. There is widespread support for the new maker space but a lot of apprehension that it could just become an expensive empty room. The space must have multiple on-ramps to make all types of students comfortable, not just the tinkering boys. I learned that the teachers are heavily burdened already, so they need a seamless transition and some easy batting-practice projects in the maker space to get comfortable with it. We also discovered an opportunity to incorporate human centered design into the curriculum at the White Mountain School.
Delivery:
I worked with the leadership team, teachers, and experts in the field to draft a floor plan, a mission statement, new curriculum, and batting practice projects to onboard both students and teachers in the space. More than that, we crafted a three year vision for integrating the new innovation space with the mission of the White Mountain School. I delivered these ideas and more in a presentation to the leadership team and in a comprehensive written report.
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