Design Thinking in the classroom and Design Thinking in Leadership -School transformation (Week 12)

Homework Task:
View David Kelly's TED Talk on 'Human-centered design' and consider the'79 ways you can use design to transform teaching and learning'
Which THREE of these ways did you find most surprising? Record your answers and in each case, explain in short why.
1. 'Swivel to attention' - it never occurred to me that furniture that twist and move will increased   students ability to concentrate. I always thought  when doing this students don't concentrate.
2. 'Slow the pace' - the idea of having furniture in hallways always made it look unorganized (or so I thought) - I would now like to think of it as places of pause, which discourage high-speed traffic
3. 'Paint by function' - I wonder why I did not realised that the same concept that one use at 
home of determining what each space is used for, to specify a paint color that supports the mood of the space should/could be applied to school


Digital & Collaborative Learning (DCL) - Design Thinking in the classroom

Our session was linked to the agile style from last week, but now we were looking at design thinking, which is more of an approach. Although similar to the agile approach, prototyping is the key to design thinking.

Meinel and Leifer claims that there are four principles to design thinking

1. The human rule - all design activity is ultimately social in nature

2. The ambiguity rule - design thinkers must preserve ambiguity

3. The re-design rule - all design is re-design

4. The tangibility rule - making ideas tangible always facilitates communication 

Task: Complete the Stanford DSchool Crash Course in design thinking methodology by redesigning the gift-giving experience for your partner. 

Liz and I used the dschool materials to interview each other. We started by gaining empathy, asking questions, sketched radical ways to meet needs, reflect and build our solution.

Here is what we came up with...

   Liz created a coffee cup for me                                    My ukulele creation for Liz

                       

                                                   Innovation is a team sport! 


There are many approaches/models to design thinking. Here are some:
                                  
                                  

                                  

If you only remember a few things...
1. You are a designer
2. Stepping out of your zone of comfort = learning
3. Embrace your beginner's mind
4. Problems are just opportunities for design in disguise


Leadership in Digital & Collaborative Learning (LDC) - Design Thinking in Leadership -School transformation 

Why do we need design thinking? Process. Structured. Purposeful.
Use design thinking to make a change happen
What does it add to being creative?

Design Thinking for PD

Key messages for me:
Don't assume you know the problem
Stop learning to bring things together

Come up with ideas, prototype ideas early, gain feedback on ideas to move them forwards

Use the information gained from today and treat it as part of our immersion (use design cycle for weeks after this). 

For every one day conference, do you have 6 weeks afterwards to test ideas out in class and getting feedback on it? 

Design thinking is never believing in your first answer or the content/happy feeling, but to encourage yourself to believe there is still a better way of doing things

Be uncomfortable with the current status quo

Task:

Evaluate one of the elements of the DSchool design thinking process, record your thoughts and publish to the Google+ Community.
After a discussion, Liz and I came up with the following:
                                     
Foster learners' natural curiosity and creativity

Empathy - teach kids to empathize with others to foster well-being and collaboration.
As teachers we need to encourage students to develop empathy. Conversations lead to a deeper shared understanding between different people.
What is missing? Reflecting. Celebrating. Cycle.  Maybe prototyping earlier. Evaluate.

This video demonstrates the power of building excellence in student work using modelling, critique and disruptive feedback.

My 'take away': Teach kids to give effective feedback

Fullan's five components of Good Change Leadership

                           


Task: (In pairs), record your view on what type of leadership is needed to facilitate design thinking.

#DTleaders: Use agile leadership/ learning to engage different kind of students and teachers. Prepare students for making choices in life by giving them a voice at school and opportunities to lead their learning. Have/ show empathy to get the best out of a team, evaluate the idea and not the person.

~ "There are three teachers of children: adults, other children and their physical environment." - Loris Malaguzzi