Workshop+Design+Thinking

=Instructor: Ewan McIntosh=

Attended by: Amy Burvall
Instructor Contact info: ewan@notosh.com
 * @http://www.notosh.com ; @http://edu.blogs.com; Tweet @ewanmcintosh; email**

[] @http://www.notosh.com/2011/07/the-design-thinking-school/ Ewan's Design Thinking library of bookmarks @http://www.delicious.com/ewan.mcintosh/designthinking Ewan's blog posts about this: @http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/design-thinking/
 * Useful sites:**

@http://www.thinkingdice.com/
 * Ewan likes "Thinking Dice", which can be purchased here:

This was the description:
Project-based learning has been let down in too many instances with "fake", academic, theoretical problems that need solving. The learning processes involved are at best fuzzy for most educators: what is "collaboration", "student-designed" and "student-led" learning?
 * Learn from the creative practices of some of the best media and tech companies in the world, with whom Ewan McIntosh has spent the past three years.
 * Find out what the independent and collaborative learning skills and processes these growing creative industries, and other business, require

Dear fellow Design Thinkers, It was a pleasure to meet you last Monday and go through the design thinking process with you. I hope we can keep the conversation going in one simple way: **if you undertake some work, or harness some of the principles we used last week in your work, I'd love to know about it. Share on a blog if you can, or share by email in all confidence if public sharing would not be appropriate. It means a lot to us to see how we can do better, too, so please make sure you fill in the post-conference feedback if you haven't already.** Attached you will find an overview of the main design thinking process for you to share with colleagues in your mission to bring them onside to a problem-finding curriculum. You'll also find ample notes and links on this blog post (look at the bottom for the 'DNA' of the session - all the links, books etc): @http://www.notosh.com/2011/07/the-design-thinking-school/ Best wishes for a restful summer vacation and an inspired start to the new school session. Ewan
 * Ewan posted this email after the session: **

It's all about being *PROBLEM FINDERS (make sure it's a problem "WORTH SOLVING") *REAL PROBLEMS WITH RELEVANCE TO KIDS (he calls these "epic") *CREATIVITY / RESPONSIBILITY / CHOICE *LOTS OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT *PROTOTYPING AND REFINING *PEER TO PEER AND SLEF-ASSESSMENT

Here are the 5 phases: 1. IMMERSION: a. teacher offers epic theme- broad enough for tangential thinking b. students observe widely and deeply c. students try to have empathy for those experiencing the problem

d. emphasis on capturing exactly - no paraphrasing, etc. Ewan likes to use cameras, videos, recorders, post-its....must rule nothing out until the synthesis stage. He feels the "I thinks" and "I believes" are quite significant in the capturing phase.

2. SYNTHESIS a. students group observations in order to bring out themes (we did these with post-it notes on a wall) b. ideas are socialized, shared with community, added to, etc.- he liked the idea of a "project corner"

c. it was fun to see how opposites worked together

3. IDEATION a. students begin to think of ideas..move from DIVERGENT to CONVERGENT thinking...solutions-based

b. We played the "100 ideas now" game c. we tried to see the best/ worst ideas, then take the "Stupidest idea" and make it a jewel

4. PROTOTYPING a. transform the abstract into tangible working model (either physical or blueprint) b. TEST the idea

5. REFINING