K12 lab network

Breaker Challenge: The Future of Stuff

susie — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:34:35 +0000

We’re fired up and building content for the The Future of Stuff. It is the design challenge we’re taking on for Breaker 2.0 in Detroit, New York and with global teams online.

What do we mean The Future of Stuff?!?!

It’s Maker Movement meets Manufacturing 2.0.

In a fictional world it’s the moment when the shipping lines from China are closed down and you still need a cup to drink water from at your next BBQ. Seriously. What would you do? And then zoom out… What IS the future of the making and distribution of stuff?

Whether we’re looking for a new pair of jeans or ten thousand microprocessors, the way we go about making and getting objects is changing fast. Current and developing technologies present exciting opportunities to democratize production and personalize the manufacturing process making it hyper-local with tools like 3D printing and facilities like TechShop. We’re entering an age of mass customization and pushing in new directions with products that bridge the digital/physical divide. How might we build an economic base of producers not just consumers? What products, services, communities, platforms, and learning engagements will facilitate entry, advancement, innovation, and continued growth of the manufacturing base in the US?

Join us to find out! And follow the action at #makerbreaker.

Fireflies and Summer Professional Development Inquiry

susie — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:10:30 +0000

My daughter came home from her after school tinkering workshop with the sweetest little firefly. The challenge was not elaborate. It was to make something that included: one cork, one item that was yellow, and some form of paper. But the minute I saw it I was taken back to last summer: It was an 80 degree night at Lake Michigan, warm enough to swim leisurely after dinner, and walk back home through the dusky woods. We must have been covered in mosquito bites, but all I remember are the fireflies. So many fireflies.

Ahhhhh. Summer.

Looking ahead to summer we wanted to share that the K12 Lab will not host the same introductory workshop as we have in the past. That said, there are many other opportunities to ignite the fire of creativity and innovation for teachers. Below are some that we know of and we are continuing to update this list.

PROJECT BREAKER — in NYC, San Francisco and Detroit
The student experience runs for 14 days from June 19-July 2 and folks seeking professional development opportunities are invited to join for the heart of the program days 4-7, with days 1 and 13 optional. Of course, the very, very dedicated are welcome to ride along for the full 14 days, but that is only for those with extreme stamina. If you are interested in the professional development opportunity, please RSVP here.

NUEVA SCHOOL
Now in its 3rd year the Nueva School offers a 4-day institute June 17-20

HENRY FORD LEARNING INSTITUTE
Back for their 2nd year is Henry Ford Learning Institute. They are running 2 intro courses July 8-10 or July 29-31, as well as a deeper dive into implementation issues July 11-12

FUSE
Mary Cantwell at Mount Vernon Presbyterian in Atlanta is joining forces with Leading is Learning founders to present FUSE June 18-19

LIME DESIGN IN NYC

Maureen Carroll and her Lime Design Associates are hosting Innovation: NYC: A Design Thinking Adventure for N-12 Educators in Manhattan on Aug 26-27th. RSVP here.

In addition to the open enrollment opportunities above we’ve also got several workshop leaders in our network that design custom programs for schools and orgs:

– Coeylen Barry at KDT Consulting
– Maureen Carroll at Lime Design
– Bobby Hughes at Aardvark Design Labs
– Melanie Kahl at Third Teacher+
– Jessica Hastings Munro at Entrepreneurs by Design
– Aaron Wilson at the Henry Ford Learning Institute

There are also some programs whose Summer 2013 programs I’m curious about. For instance, Cooper-Hewitt didn’t have anything posted yet. And after last summer’s online course drew 4500 participants I wonder what fun things Edutopia/Riverdale/IDEO might cook up…

While we wait on more Summer 2013 opportunities to get posted, please remember the fireflies!

Prototyping the Extreme by Design WATCH+DESIGN workshop with K12 Lab Network Teachers

susie — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 01:42:41 +0000

At the K12 Lab Network we live to prototype. Period. It is our primary mode of getting things done and learning what works and what doesn’t. At last month’s network event we did it with a twist. We had the great pleasure to screen a new documentary film by Ralph King and Michael Schwarz called Extreme by Design and simultaneously prototyped a new to the world approach to introducing design thinking to both adults and children.

It was the first prototype of what we’re calling the WATCH+DESIGN workshop. We literally intercut the documentary film with a hands-on workshop. It could have ruined both the film and the hands on experience, but it worked! Plenty to tweak to make it really sing and work in school classrooms and other contexts, but the essential premise — allowing you to have a hands on experience as a designer while watching others do it — was quite compelling.

The WATCH+DESIGN workshop is now a mini-introduction to design thinking to prepare students (aged 12 to 22) to apply the creative process in post-workshop projects. The fast-paced, two-hour exercise starts with a design challenge (e.g. re-imagine a volunteer experience) and covers four design steps (frame, imagine, make, test). In between these steps, we present our hour-long PBS documentary film, Extreme By Design, (paused twice at dramatic breakpoints). The format enables participants to see themselves as designers before the film begins. The film, in turn, provides insights that assist participants in their design challenge. (The film gets it title from the d.school’s popular course led by Jim Patell called Design for Extreme Affordability.)

Throughout the spring we are continuing to try out the WATCH+DESIGN workshop with Bay Area schools (and beyond?!). If you’re interested, please contact: Ralph King via email at king_ralph [AT]gsb[DOT]stanfor [DOT]edu. We highly recommend it if you are looking for a great way to introduce your students/parents to the power of design thinking.

The team is also thrilled to announce that the film will air on PBS later this year (date TBD). Woot! For updates we invite you to follow the Extreme by Design team’s journey on their Facebook page.

Breaker Summer 2013

susie — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 23:36:41 +0000

We at the d.K12 Lab Network are very much looking forward to partnering with Breaker to build the Breaker 2.0 experience this summer. The project takes us to New York City and Detroit. In each city some adventurous 18-24 year olds will try their hands at design thinking and social entrepreneurship in a 14-day intensive innovation bootcamp (June 19-July 2). In addition we’ll be launching an online platform so that folks online and global teams. Finally we are inviting teachers to come ride along for a portion of the immersive experience as well.

Have students/graduates you think should join in? Application is now live here.

Have educators that might want to ride along? Teachers are invited for Days 4-7 (June 22-25) in Detroit and New York. Interest form is live here.

2013: Edu Innovator Partnerships

susie — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:38:13 +0000

Collaboration is fundamental to design thinking and at the d.school we take partnering on projects and collaborating on experiments very seriously. (Meaning we try to do good work and have a lot of fun with a strong bias to action!)We’re excited to announce the d.K12 Lab Network’s first new project partners for 2013. They are all projects launched by edu innovators working on new platforms for bringing design thinking, social entrepreneurship, and creativity building exercises to young people and those that love them. We’re partnering to help drive them forward. Check them out!

Project Breaker – We’re thrilled to be working with Juliette LaMontagne, a Senior TED Fellow and the creator of Project Breaker. We’re joining forces with her to create Breaker 2.0 — a 2-week social entrepreneurship challenge for 18-24 year olds. For Breaker 2.0 we’re going to 3 cities, using an online platform for distributed participation, and embedding professional development. Phew… A lot to prototype, but it is going to be a blast! It’ll be June 19-July 2 in New York, Detroit, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Stay tuned to sign up for the PD portion or to engage youth in your school/programs.

Spark Truck – We’ll be working with the fabulous Eugene Korsunskiy and Jason Chua of the Spark Truck crew to invent Spark Truck: The Odyssey Continues… That’s a working title because the plan is for Stanford students and partners to collaborate in spring quarter to envision what the Spark Truck should be for its 2.0 journey. At its core it is a mobile education platform. How does the fabulous maker mobile evolve? Do we focus on community engagement? local produce, cooking, and math? literacy? We’ll work with the team that created it to imagine what it could be next… Key words: Road trip!

Extreme by Design – Is a new film by Ralph King. It follows three students in the d.school’s class Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability. Check out the trailer here. It will be released in the coming year on PBS and will also be having a school tour. We are collaborating with Ralph to prototype a Design + Watch mini workshop. The idea is that the film will inspire young people with the power of design thinking, empathy and social entrepreneurship and then we’ll build on it immeidately with a hands-on introduction to design thinking. The first prototype event scheduled for January 29th at the d.school! If you are local and would like to attend, please RSVP here.

Making Design Process Your Own: Visualizations and Variations

susie — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:47:26 +0000

Making something your own is a key marker of learning. It is true for both individuals as well as for organizations. As design thinking as a way of learning spreads in schools and programs across the globe we are watching to see how people vary the design thinking process and make it their own. We think it is an exciting sign of the growth and development of the movement.

Over the years at the d.school we’ve visualized the design thinking process in different ways. Our current standard visualization has 5 phases:

After students at the d.school have worked through the design thinking process over a couple of project cycles we specifically ask folks to come up with their own process visualization. The prompt is a simple one, meant to elicit their visceral sense of the process and to ground them in the habit of being mindful of process.

Being “mindful of process” makes you keenly aware of what stage of the design process you are engaged in and what behaviors and goals you may have at any given moment. For instance, when do you need to be highly generative vs. when you need to converge on a single path? Or when you need more empathy vs. more ideas?

What follows are a few examples from schools of different visualization of the design thinking process. For example at Nueva’s I-Lab a key part of the visualization is the question: “What Next?” This question encourages students to be mindful of process. The goal is not simply to do what is on the page, but to interrogate: ”What do I actually need to do next?”

At the Henry Ford Learning Institute schools the process looks like this:

At Urban Montessori we’ve made the key elements of the design thinking process into the school’s core values. The words — notice+care, work together+create, share+reflect — are things that we hope all members of the community, from kindergarteners to board members, parents to teachers, will actively use as they discover opportunities and solve problems.

Of course not just schools/programs are visualizing the design thinking process… IDEO/Riverdale’s Design Thinking for Educators has conceptual buckets:

And designED: Integrating Design Thinking into Your Classroom (new e-book by Maureen Carroll and her Lime Design partners) has these three modalities:

We love collecting visualizations and seeing how you are making design thinking your own. Please let us know: How are you (and your students?!) visualizing the design process?

5 years! A look back and “how might we”s for the future

admin — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:59:02 +0000

5 years ago, the d.school launched the K12 Lab initiative. We started with a project to help the Nueva School build their now thriving (and famous!) I-Lab program. That project was the perfect way to get our hands dirty with design in the K12 space. We learned so much and were deeply moved by working with Kim Saxe and the teachers + students at Nueva. From there we partnered with the Henry Ford Learning Institute and East Palo Alto Academy Elementary School, seeking to build curriculum for K through 12 students in the foundations of innovation and continuing to deepen our empathy for teachers and students. And then, things went nuts! With the leadership of Rich Crandall and his dedicated partner in crime Adam Royalty the K12 Lab has led workshops with teachers and administrators from across the globe to explore what design thinking could mean in their practices. They also mentored eager teams of Stanford graduate students with the K12 Club, No Teacher Left Behind, and other Innovations in Education courses. With partners Professor Shelley Goldman, Maureen Carroll, and Leticia Britos Cavagnaro research efforts were begun. Partnership with Sandy Speicher at IDEO led to exciting national workshops. With the Riverside School in India we helped launch Design for Change. Projects with the Girl Scouts, the Tech Museum, and Maker Faire yielded exciting prototypes with budding innovators. Charters in Berkeley and Oakland, CA were encouraged to build design thinking into their DNA. Sessions with Teacher for America and New Schools Venture Fund kicked of work with ed tech entrepreneurs. The list literally goes on and on… (And Adam still has frequent flyer miles to burn.)

SO NOW… there is a national and international movement to bring design thinking into K12 education. It is in this awesome context of momentum and commitment that we at the d.school seek to re-ignite the K12 Lab’s work. And we’re excited – woot!

Two key things to share today as we re-launch our efforts. First we are calling ourselves the K12 Lab Network. It isn’t a sexy rebranding, but rather speaks to our desire to be a network player (an oh so important 21st century skill!). Secondly we are guiding our next phase of exploration with four key verbs. They do not represent a precise point of view as of yet, but are starting points for conversations and experiments. (And you’ve guessed it, this blog is one of the experiments. Thanks, Molly!)

EXPERIMENT how might we experiment at the edges of what’s currently possible?
PARTICIPATE how might we participate most empathically and meaningfully in the emergent network?
PROVOKE how might we push ourselves and the field to move beyond design thinking?
EMPOWER how might we empower all children to have creative confidence and know that they can change the world?

So tell us, dear network, what “how might we”s are motivating your work? And what experiments would you like to see?

Introducing Susie Wise, K12 Lab Network director

admin — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:57:59 +0000

The d.school is thrilled to announce that Susie Wise will be rejoining us to lead the next chapter of our efforts in K12 education.

Susie has been a creative force in the d.school since its earliest days. From helping to design & teach one of the earliest classes in advanced Empathy methods, to spearheading our partnership with the Nueva School to help launch their innovation lab, to pioneering early ideas about publishing teaching resources, Susie’s impact has spanned a wide range.

Since she was last at the d.school in 2008-2010, Susie completed her Ph.D. in Learning Sciences and Technology Design, co-founded a school in Oakland called Urban Montessori, and worked as a design strategist and innovation coach at Intuit.

Susie started leading the K12 Lab Network in late October 2012, and is planning a series of new activities and experiments. We’ll keep you posted here about upcoming events and opportunities to engage.