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.