Week 11

As was mentioned in last weeks blog, we started a new project and began to prepare for our innovation open lab. Back in week 1 when we were briefly told about this open lab, I was honestly a bit nervous about it, and wasnt sure how it would be possible to share innovation with others when i didnt really know what innovation was! Now that we have come through the whole module and I have become more aware of the importance of innovation, i felt comfortable sharing innovation, especially with the group that we were assigned. 

Our group had chosen to work with our home universities, on how to share innovation with them. We chose to create a program or guideline for an innovation intensive day, in which students and lecturers could learn how to be innovative and see the importance of using innovation in the classroom. The aim for this day would be that after getting a taste of what innovation is, students would sign up for a week of intensive training in how to teach innovation. As we couldnt speak to our universities directly or present to them, we put together a presentation and a pack of resources that could be given to a college to help them run the day.

Before actually doing our open lab, we wanted to get some feedback from actual lecturers and the students union president at our universities in Spain and Northern Ireland to find out whether a day like this would be a good idea. We did this by sending them a rough plan of the day and got these replies;

“A students’ university experience must be shrouded in vibrancy and opportunity; schemes and plans which seek to introduce innovation in Stranmillis can only benefit this process and assist the things which are already in place to encourage student involvement. Activities based upon teamwork, co-operation and primarily innovation are instrumental in ensuring that students are well aware that they have a voice on campus, and have the right and ability to make a difference”.

-          (Student president, Stranmillis University College, Northern Ireland)

‘What a wonderful idea. The concept of learning about, then teaching, innovation is just the kind of more active and hands-on approach that many of us are trying to do in Stran. It would fit perfectly towards the end of the year within the Degree Enhancement Programme, when students elect to do short courses on such areas as ipad training, Makaton, EAL, etc.

Your idea for the day is sound, comprising the types of activity currently experienced in DMU, or other courses (such as Richard’s or mine) on ALTMs, or Areas of Specialism such as Drama. Your planned activities, tasks and the sequencing of them work well, building up to a nice sense of intensity towards the end, and culminating in a well-considered finale in the shape of the Dragons’ Den presentation.’

-         (Lecturer, Stranmillis University College, Northern Ireland)

‘Mondragon University is a young cooperative university. Innovation has been core to our university since its establishment in 1997: Its trilingual model (Basque Spanish and English), its commitment to research and its practical orientation remain the focal points of the institution. Likewise, the University has long had a strong commitment to social transformation and social accessibility. However, innovation is an ongoing process and Mondragon Unibertsitatea remains inspired by the original spirit that allowed the institution to be establish and become reputed both locally and globally. The internalisation of our students now provides a window to the world from which both our institution and our students benefit from: a new chance to learn, a new chance to be innovative. It is that scenario that I regard Goretti and Andrea’s project on innovation highly interesting for our university’

-          (Lecturer, Mondragon University, Spain)

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During class we had a lot to do. We decided that if a day like this was to be run in a university, there would need to be some promotion to generate interest in students. We made a poster to be put up around the college and a trailer video to be emailed to students we did this using an iPad app which turned out brilliantly! Click here to see our trailer.

We had planned that instead of counting on being able to run the event ourselves, we would create a loose outline or guideline so that a group of students or lecturers could take on the project and adapt it to their needs or abilities. We created a book of this outline, which included ideas for an introduction – with a video entitled ‘what is innovation’ that we created during the open lab, find it here, and a 4 stage model for the main body of the day (feel, imagine, do, share – a model we used for our last project) which will guide the users through the model with ideas and outlines but is flexible enough. We also included a list of energiser games and challenges to use throughout the day and a resource list.

We created a Prezi which included our goals and aims for the process and an outline of the support that would be needed to run the day.

After our preparation time was over, we had a talk from Nicolaj’s brother about social innovation. He discussed how he used innovation to motivate young people in Copenhagen and to increase their job prospects by training them to be football coaches. It was interesting to hear how innovation can be used in other contexts than education or business.

We then were able to share our results/what we found with two other groups from our class. it was interesting to see what the other groups who were working with teachers and students found, and compare it with our own project.

I throughly enjoyed this open lab as I think it is a great way to share ideas and come up with realistic ways to share innovation. It was fun and interesting and I think something I would definitely bring back to my home university.

As this week is our last week of the course, we had to complete an evaluation. It allowed us to reflect on what we have learned about innovation, teamwork and planning. I feel that I have learned a lot from this module, and will take a lot of ideas and skills home with me to Northern Ireland.

Week 10

This week in innovation lab we started, yet again, a new project. I feel like the last project flew past us very quickly, so it is strange to be starting a whole new project with new groups, but it will be refreshing to have new ideas.

We started the class with a quick task to see how innovative we could be with some random resources. Each group had two paper plates, some rubber bands, some dry spaghetti, string, masking tape and, most importantly, a marshmallow. Despite the attempts of some of my classmates, we were asked to refrain from eating the marshmallow as it was the main part of the task. The aim was to create a structure as high as possible, that would hold the marshmallow on top. After some brainstorming, my group decided to focus on the sturdiness of the structure and worry about the height afterwards. We worked well as a team, however, when the time was drawing to a close, we didn't have a very strong or high structure, so we failed the task. I enjoyed this task as an opening to the class as it got us to think on our feet and got our brains working. 

The new project, like the last one, is one that we don't have much time to prepare. We will be completing an open lab, in which we have to share innovation with others. There are 6 different client groups that the class will be sharing with, which were chosen by interest. The 6 groups are; street -talking to people on the streets of Copenhagen, college - talking to students, school - talking to the pupils and teachers in a school, teacher - working with teachers at home or in Denmark, home - working with our home institution and the student teachers there, and Internet group - working with a group of people over the Internet. I chose to work in the home group, as I wanted to see how innovation could be brought into my university at home. 

As a group, we began to look at how this could work. I was working with Goretti, Rachel and Emily, Nd we began to look at the two universities represented and how an innovation course/day would work in each of them. Would we be able to run a course? Would it simply just be an advert? Would we have the means to run a whole week of an intensive innovation course? After a lot of brainstorming we settled on a one day event which taught student teachers and lecturers what innovation was and how to be innovative. We decided to use the model of 'feel; imagine; do; share' that we used in our last project as the basis for our day, and to promote it in various ways throughout our home colleges. The aim would be to allow students a chance at the end of this one day taster to sign up for a longer course on how to teach innovation to children.

We had to take into consideration what could go wrong if we conducted a day like this at our home university. We looked at issues like money, time, space, lack of motivation in students, lack of materials, or unwillingness to sign up for the longer course. These will be things that would have to be looked at in greater detail if the course was to be pitched to the university. I think it could be so,etching that could be pitched, and I am looking forward to hear the feedback from the various lecturers and teachers. 

During the open lab on the 7th of May we will create this programme, making any resources that would be needed for the course, and use feedback which we will collect from students and lecturers at our home colleges to show our class how innovation would be received at home. So far I am enjoying this project and think it is definitely something that could be brought to my home college, Stranmillis.

Week 9

What was the best moment of your day?

The best moment of teaching this group of students to innovate was seeing them come up with the ideas that we had originally thought of, without us even mentioning them. That was when we knew we must have been doing something right!

I really enjoyed this day, as it allowed us to change roles and become the teacher instead of the ones using our imagination and being innovative. It helped me to improve my teaching and group working skills and to see what teaching in a Danish classroom would be like. If I could improve one thing about the day it would have been to have more time to spend working on these projects and the children really enjoyed them. 

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Today we completed this project of teaching innovation. Goretti, Jonas, Kim and myself were given a group of 10 9th graders to work with, and though they didn't seem too interested in our plan to redesign their hallways at first, they soon got into it and came up with some great ideas. They took on the character of the user they had been designated, and brainstormed well to come up with a wide range of solutions, before narrowing these down to a few useable ones. The students worked well as a team and althought we had given them only a few resources were able to make prototypes and share these with the class.

I felt that the feel, imagine, do, share model worked well, and our flexible teaching plan was useful as the timing was a little longer than we had initially thought. 

I think if I was to do this lesson again, I would ensure that each member of the group had a designated part of the plan to take charge of, as today we were unsure who was doing what most of the time.

Week 8

This weeks class was focused on a new project, which consists of an afternoon spent teaching children to be innovative.  I really liked the idea of this project because teaching is something I feel comfortable doing, and I was looking forward to see what ideas and innovative prototypes em could get from our lesson. We had only one class to plan this project and with such little time we decided not to come up with a whole new idea, but instead to adapt the idea we had used for our first innovation project. I think this worked well as we were all very familiar with the process and so able to teach it better.

Our initial 'problem' had been titled "how might we create a more organised, multifunctional space in the school hallways - accommodating for group work, individual study and recreational time". Next week will take this problem, and allow the children to come up with innovative ways that they could solve it. We will do this in 4 steps;

Feel : understanding and empathising with the user

Imagine : coming up with solutions to the problem

Do : creating a prototype for their solution

Share : sharing their ideas with the class

Due to a the fact that we are unsure of how many pupils and how much time we will have, we came up with a flexible teaching plan which follows the model described above. Group work with such a tight deadline was good for our group, as we learned to listen to every idea and to quickly decide which were worth keeping and which wouldn't be feasible in the short time and with the lack of resources we had.

This innovation lab class also included an evaluation of our blogs so far, and a briefing of the new criteria for our blogs. I thought this was very important as blogging has been difficult so far due to a mix up in what we were actually meant to be doing. Now I feel like I know a little better what I'm meant to be writing about and documenting about our classes.

This is the flexible teaching plan that we have come up with;

"How might we create a more organised, multifunctional space in the school hallways - accomodating for groupwork, individual study and recreational time."

 

* : If we have more time... 

Roles: We will split us up during the groupwork to coach. One of us (it will change) will give the instructions to everyone at the same time.


Feel 
; Understand user-empathise 

- introduce question/problem

- Spliting up the groups ; imagine you are a different age-group (different perspectives) 

- Depending on the size of the groups, 3 to 5 pupils in each group.


- We tell the pupils our problem  ”How might we...”
Walking debate:  Do you reconize the problem? Yes or no - Walk to a corner
. Pupils tell each other their opinions


*A small walk trough the hallways to observe and reflect about the debat


*We tell the pupils what the children and teachers told us about the problem
(too much noise in the hallways,…)

Imagine ; 
Solutions:  walk on the moon phase

- Brainstorm post-its (individually) 
We prefer to do this in the hallways, but it can be anywhere.


*The pupils make their own criteria for a good solution and reflect: do our ideas fit with the criteria?


*Second brainstorm  with coaching

imagine you are …
-a football star
-school principal
-your teacher
-your mum
-Mickey mouse
-Justin Bieber
-Barbie


*Think of something that is... -Small as a peanut
-Bigger then a house
-very cheap
-very expensive


*Walk alone to think  pupils get the chance to write more ideas down.


- Pick your 2 favourite ideas (each pupil) 


- Vote in the group , end up with 1 solution each

Do ; 
Create solution/prototyping

- Draw the solution incoperating the idea.

- Or draw an other one his/her favourite solution

- Choose one or more ideas 
”fight”: other group can choose the ’best’ idea

- Prototyping; We will give them options e.g. 

- create; a story: newspaper article, a letter, idea of a text for on the school website

- An ad: promote the idea

- A model: 3D

- A role-play: situation
(We can broaden the prototype)


Share ; Presenting the solution to the other groups.

*The others can write ”Likes” and ”Questions” on post-its

- Each group will reflect on these likes and questions.

- ”Who will you really like to listen to your solution?”

Week 7

This week was the final stage of our design thinking project. The name of the phase was; Evolution/iterate/ delivery & evaluate. Our project has evolved a lot over the past few weeks and before we went into the school, Kim, Goretti and I met up to discuss the elements that we would like to present on the day and how we would do this. 

We decided to do this simply, not using our basic prototype, but by using images and a presentation (link to our prezi here), along with some physical examples to present our idea to the pupils and teachers at Stengard Skole. This blog will outline what this presentation entailed, and the key ideas that we put forward to the small groups of students in the library of the school.

As i have previously explained in my blogs, we decided to focus on the hallway space in the school and how this could be improved as it is used a lot in the school for many different purposes. At the start of our presentation we told the pupils the information we had gathered on our first visit, and what we thought needed to be done. Most of them nodded in agreement when we mentioned the distracting, crowded space in the hallways, which we saw as a good sign. 

We told them that we had decided that for our project we would like to find a way to change the hallway, to make it a multi functional space for all children to use, whether this is for individual study, group work or relaxing during breaks. We showed the children and teachers our ideas, some easier to implement than others, that could be put in place by the school to maximize the functionality of these spaces across the school. 

These final ideas that we showcased were;

*movable walls; so that children can change spaces from group spaces to spaces for individual work. These can be used during group work or for display purposes (using post-its, notes, posters etc) They are flexible, can put them in the corner or against the wall. They can be used to change a space quickly and easily, with little cost.

*curtains; can be used to change the function of a space quickly and easy. We suggested that pupils can use old curtains or use fabric to make their own curtains.

*flags/signs; signs to show what the noise level should be in an area, or what type of space it is. We showed simple examples of these signs - a 'SHH, quiet area sign - and flags - red for no noise, green for noise allowed. We explained that again these signs and flags could be made by the children. 

*study tent; an alternative idea for an area for individual study/reading space. we explained that this could be used for either recreational time or study.

*An idea we had for the younger children was to have an area in the hallway where they can build their own study spaces, whether this is on the ground using cardboard boxes, or between tables using Lego pieces.

Our main aims for the project, which we stated at the end of our presentation were;

*recycling - we hope that most of the resources can me made from recycled materials
*self-made - some of the resources can be made in class by the pupils
*responsibility - having involvement in the process will hopefully help the children to take responsibility for the space and respect the rules
*flexible - easily changed to create multi-functional spaces

We made several small presentations to groups throughout the afternoon and received feedback from both students and teachers. It was as follows;

- Lego blocks for young children might be a distraction

- Was there a budget in mind for the movable walls? Would these be expensive?

- The recycling is a good idea as it cuts down costs and is good for the environment

- Students could make things like curtains or walls as they have a class in school which teaches practical skills like sewing and woodwork

- children will have more respect for the rules and obey the signs if they played a part in making them or coming up with the rules.

- flags for noise level or different areas could also be good in the library

This feedback was encouraging to us, and gave us some points to think about as we looked at the project to evaluate it. We are hoping that the school will take some of our ideas and implement them in the hallways to create a better learning and recreational environment for the children.

Week 6

After completing the first 3 phases of our design thinking project over the past few weeks, we moved on this week to phase 4. This phase was entitled 'experimentation and prototype', and enabled us to bring our ideas alive and present them to the rest of our class. I looked forward to this phase as i knew we had a few good ideas and wanted to see how they would materialize.

We began the class by using an online tool called "Padlet", a website where everyone in the class could post notelets of their thoughts or quotes from their blogs. These individual posts would all appear on the screen so that we would be able to view them all and discuss with a partner.

After this, we took the drawings from last week of our individual ideas and stuck them to the wall of the classroom with a blank sheet of paper below it. We each wrote our comments on the ideas and then chose one to use. we decided that we liked different parts of each idea, so compiled the final one by using aspects from each. We then used Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats to look at our idea and think about each aspect and how we feel about it. 

Once we had a concrete idea, we had half an hour to create a basic prototype explaining the concept and present this to the class. Kim, Goretti and I used a cardboard box, tin foil, plastic cups, and tissue paper to create a working prototype of our multifunctional hallway. We presented this to the class and were able to demonstrate how the idea would be put in place in the school. 

As we presented our idea, the rest of the class were jotting down things that they liked, ideas they had, questions they had and wishes for our idea. They stuck these on a grid and we were able to evaluate and change our idea using this feedback, in order to make a new prototype and presentation to take to the school this week.

I felt that this phase was the most helpful and productive so far and I enjoyed the class.

Week 5

In class this week we began by looking back at last weeks processes of innovation, and the first two phases of our project. We narrowed down the main concepts to two or three and pitched these to the class so that they could give us feedback in the form of a vote, to give us an idea of which concept to carry forward into an idea.

When we had done this, it was time to move on to the ideation phase of the project. We did a quick exercise outside to get us ready for this, where we went for a walk with a partner and came up with some crazy ideas of what we would take for a trip to the moon. The point was that no idea was a bad idea, and that we should encourage any idea. This led on to some ideas about our own project, our group decided to look more closely at the concept of creating multifunctional spaces for use outside the classroom, and we came up with a lot of crazy ideas e.g. Study caves, hammocks for free time, and a graffiti wall! These were among some more realistic ideas, and we continue the ideation process by sorting all of our ideas into how difficult they would be to carry out, and how many people they would help. 

Individually, we then looked at the array of ideas on the desk and drew what we visualised as the product or solution we would eventually create. These all turned out very differently, but it was good to see how everyone saw our final project.

This weeks class was an interesting one, as we began to see how each person in our group worked and the different ideas of innovation they had. I think some of the ideation processes worked well like the walk on the mood activity, but some seemed a little far-fetched, and I struggled to get into the right frame of mind during these activities. However, our final sketches showed that these were worthwhile and helped us during this ideation process.

Week 4

This week was our first visit to Stengard Skole and my first experience of a Danish Folkeskole. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, and was very different to schools I am used to in Northern Ireland, but when walking around it and seeing the different aspects of the school system, while thinking of ways to be innovative and solve the problems of the school, it seemed to be the perfect place to practice innovation.

How can innovation be organised into processes?

innovation can be organised easily into phases and processes, and on Thursday we started the first phase of our design thinking/innovation project. We visited
Stengaardsskol to complete the discovery/empathy phase of the project. I found this phase of the project very interesting, particularly because it was my first experience of a Danish school. We were given a tour of the school by Lonni, and to our surprise there were children working in the hallways and the library, instead of in their classrooms. This is a concept that is very unfamiliar to me as all written work done in a Northern Irish school is completed in the classroom with a teachers supervision.

work stations in the hallways

The atmosphere of the school was very different to what I was used to, as teachers give their students breaks every couple of hours, meaning that there were children walking around the school a lot of the time we were there.

Another thing I found very interesting was the use of technology in the school. Every child was provided with their own iPad, for use both in class and in their spare time. When walking around the school we saw these being used in several ways. Children were using their iPads for playing games, both educational and non-educational, and they were also using them to create projects and presentations. It was hard to tell whether the iPads were being used efficiently or not.

We interviewed some children and teachers to get an insight into what the school was like, with particular focus on how the space in the school was used. The participants were happy to answer us and gave us a lot of information to use in the next phase of our project.

Interviewing 2 sixth graders

Innovation can be organised into processes. This field work or gathering of information was the first process, and after this we had to organise the stories and information that we found. We did this by each telling a story that we heard at the school. while we did this, the other members of our group took some postits and wrote down any thoughts that the story provoked. We then organised these thoughts by grouping them and giving them headings, picking out the key concepts/themes e.g. use of space, ipads etc. 

After doing this, we looked at the postits under these headings and gave each of them a key insight that we had taken from them.

This organisation will help us move on to the next phase of our project.

Week 3

In class today, we had to choose from pictures laid across the floor. We were asked to select a picture that we thought reflected creativity, and to walk around the classroom trying to guess why people chose the picture they did. 

These are some of the pictures that my classmates chose and why;

Anna chose this picture of a child laughing because she felt that creativity brings joy and often children are creative.

Emily chose this picture because she saw creativity as something that all people possess, no matter what age, race or gender.

Rachel saw creativity as a form of expression, like this picture of graffiti.

This starter activity was a way of getting us to use our creative minds to interpret these pictures, and it paved the way for the next activity which was based on our readings. Our lecturer gave everyone out a quote or definition on creativity from the reading that we had prepared for that day (Kelly & Kelly, 2007) and we had to walk around the room discussing these quotes and trying to find a match for the words and definitions. I really liked this started activity as it allowed us to us the readings we had done, and to get each others opinions on what the quotes and definitions meant to us. It was interesting to see how these changed throughout the class. This is an activity I would definitely take and use in my own teaching. 

To get us thinking more about education, we watched an video of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson on the reasons for changing education.

 

He made some interesting points about how education standards should be raised. He raised the point that academic and non academic are judged today, and that children should be encouraged to be creative, not just strive towards high academic success. Robinson commented on the rise of ADHD being treated in children, and how their stimulation is being significantly lowered by medication, making their creativity levels and motivation drop. He suggested that to combat this and the problem that academics has become too focused upon, that the paradigm should be changed and we should be going in the opposite way to standardisation.

The second half of our class was spent preparing the first part of our assessment. The assessment is about design thinking and problem solving, and we will be going into schools to talk to teachers and pupils about how design thinking could improve their school.

We began by getting into groups of mixed nationality, and thinking about what our dream classroom would include. I thought this was good as it meant there was a mix of ideas and personalities, and a range of experiences from schools around Europe. I was in a group with Kim and Goretti. We looked at practical things, and some ideas that we wished existed for our classrooms. We then took these ideas and thought about how we might make these things happen in the classroom. This led to us starting to look at what we were actually going to do for our assessment, thinking about our end goals and the constraints we might need to think about. Next week we will be going into a school to talk with members of the school community, so we decided in our group who we wanted to interview and the broad and specific questions that we would ask. I am looking forward to this as I have never been in a Danish school before and I am interested to see what both the teaching and the layout in the school is like. We ended the class by giving a brief pitch to the class about what we would be focusing on in the school, and took any feedback or ideas they wished to give us.

Week 2

This week we did a few more group activities, instead of individually or in pairs. I enjoyed this as it allowed me to see what other people's opinions were about innovation, and gave me a better idea of what it was. However, in the task we completed, the members of my group had very different views on what innovation was from a welfare perspective, and in the short time we had we didn't really get to discuss them all thoroughly.

What is innovation in a welfare perspective?

When looking at innovation from a welfare perspective, our group decided to focus on the wants and needs of different societies and how innovation can influence their lives. We looked at the basic needs for survival and how innovation in developing countries in the fields of farming and healthcare can really change people's lives e.g new equipment for drinking water, or new farming equipment or methods of generating income. In more western societies the media plays a big part in innovation, people have more wants than needs and the amount of advertising in the media means that people lose interest in what they have and are always looking for new things e.g people lose interest in the latest iPhone and so look to design thinkers to come up with something new to meet their ever changing 'needs'. This is where innovative design thinking becomes useful.

Week 1

This class was a very interesting one for me. I wasn't really sure what to expect when coming into this module, and I definitely didn't have a clear idea of what innovation was. I found the design thinking activity a bit strange at first, and it was hard to get into the right design mindset when starting it, but after a few of the steps I got more comfortable and started to use my imagination. This class definitely helped me to understand more about innovation and what it is.

Question 1 - What is your definition of innovation?

The concept of 'innovation' is a term that can be interpreted in many ways. In our class, there were many different ideas of what innovation could be, and it is difficult to find the correct definition from these. In my opinion, innovation is identifying a problem and designing something to help to solve it. This can be either something new, or a modification of something that already exists. Innovation is being creative, and experimenting with materials, ideas or approaches in a way that can help to solve a problem. 


Question 2 - How does your experience with design thinking fit your ideas about innovation?

I feel that the design thinking activity we did in class gave me a better understanding of what innovation really means, and I do feel that my experience with this fits in with my personal definition. By interviewing the user, we identified a problem and took a series of steps to discover the best way of solving this problem. When being innovative, we need to use our imagination to be creative, while keeping in mind the needs of the user.