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?”