Or how a scholarship, a group of mentors, and a deadline taught me to do much more with much less.
The email that changed everything
About a year ago, I submitted my application for an ANFAIA scholarship, without much hope, I have to admit. I had just finished a nine-month AI development bootcamp and felt completely ready to jump in. There was an idea I had been turning over in my head for a few months, so I tried to build a strong project and sent it off: the idea was to create a chatbot that could develop PBL projects, project-based learning, adapted to every need according to the curricular needs of the students in a classroom, whether or not they had special educational support needs.
That means something like this: I have a classroom where Claudio has ADD, but he is great at maths and loves helping others. Sara has high abilities, but she gets nervous when there is too much noise in class because she needs calm to concentrate. Emilio has no diagnosis, has a huge imagination, and does very well with reading and writing, but gets stuck with maths. How can I create an activity where they have fun and enjoy learning, while still making it demanding enough for them to learn what they need?
In May last year, I got the news: I had been awarded the scholarship.
I was unbelievably excited. Was Ismael Faro really going to mentor me, together with people of his calibre? Would I be up to the task? Oh my goodness. Did I accidentally give the impression that I actually knew how to do this? They are definitely going to be disappointed... They are going to regret giving me this incredible gift...
Do you know those "beautiful nerves" you get when you are preparing for a trip? That was exactly how I felt throughout May and June. And then July arrived, and with it, the first day of my journey.
First station: The Briefing, or how I lost all my travel guides
On the first day of July, I received the instructions for what was expected of me during those two months. Right away I was stunned, because the ultra-complete project I had submitted had been cut by more than half for the briefing.
"Carolina, if you expected to do all this in two months, you are dreaming. Let us see if you can at least do this", it seemed to tell me, pointing to a painfully small fraction of my carefully prepared document. I had planned the journey down to the last detail, but the country I had just landed in did not care about my plans. So I had to start by finding the first place to sleep.
The idea was clear: during the first month I needed a PoC, and during the second, a functional MVP. But what did that actually mean? How was one different from the other? I had to knock down all the castles I had built in my head and keep only a minimal functional structure that could be presented to a client. How was I going to do that?
The PBL Lagoon, looking for shelter on the island of Simplicity
At first I tried to frame it under the PBL label, project-based learning, but after reading enough documentation on the subject I realised that PBL theory was too demanding and strict compared with what I considered important for everyday teachers.
And what do teachers really need? They need to be able to create activities, such as:
Such a strict methodological framework is not what they need. They need to know what to do when they walk through the classroom door. Something flexible and permissive enough for the reality lived in classrooms.
So deciding to call them "pedagogical activities" was also a development decision.
Lost in the Great Valley of data
In the first meetings with the mentors, I remember that the direction was to train our own model. Okay, then, let us get to work. What do I need?
I need complete activities, oriented toward a specific classroom. And then my wonderful mentors came to my rescue: "Listen, Carol, this is getting out of hand. Take what is most characteristic, or most representative, or the slice you think makes sense, and work with that". And of course, inside me, my psychologist soul was shouting: "Human beings cannot be sliced into parts, nor can any of their characteristics be reduced in importance!". But my developer/scholarship-recipient self said: "Sure, sure... thank you!".
But inevitably, again and again, I kept trying to understand the real need, and important things kept appearing:
Mentorship: "Wait, wait, Carol... Reduce. Be specific. What is the most important thing in all of this? What do you really need? You have to reduce, reduce, and reduce, imagine the whole cake, but keep only one small slice. Separate what is important from the nice to have".
Carol: "Thank you for pulling me out of this infinite loop of human needs inside complex structures such as any classroom".
Okay, I focused on:
At this point I ran into the next difficulty: data structure and formats. I needed to structure and relate the data logically, while also giving it the flexibility that living systems need:
I had to make decisions, learning from them and taking responsibility for what I gained and lost in each one. The classrooms and student profiles stayed as JSON, while I created the pedagogical activities in Markdown.
And so, although I had fallen out of the boat several times, luckily it was summer and I managed to reach the other side of the lake, quite soaked, and continue my journey.
I will keep telling you about it!
:)