Design Thinking in Education: Empathy, Challenge, Discovery, and Sharing

"Design thinking gave me a process to weave through all of the project–based learning experiences I create with my kiddos." "As a leader of a #NextGen school, design thinking is our continuous innovation process." "Design thinking reminds me all the time why I became an educator; it all starts with empathy." An Oasis for Educators The quotes above -- full of insight and affirmation -- are just some of the many that I've heard from educators taken by the power of design thinking and moved to bring it into their practice. In the last few years, the field has witnessed an explosion of interest in design thinking, nationally and internationally. As the movement for design thinking in education broadens and deepens, many practitioners are flexibly customizing the design thinking process in their own contexts. 4 Modes for Developing Your Practice If you're considering how to embrace design thinking in your school culture, I believe you should focus on four critical modes underlying the process:

19 Top Ideas for Education in Drive by Daniel Pink used with permission of the author Drive the Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us. 2009. by Daniel PinkI finally finished Drive, by Daniel Pink. Since I had read so many reviews about the book, seen the video (below), and engaged in many education discussions about motivation, I felt like I knew the book before I started. I am glad that I read the whole book to fill in what I’d been missing. Obvious education connections. 2. How many times have we educators offered more points on an assignment to those students who will be creative in their project. 3. When we apply these ingredients to students and teachers we get exciting results. 4. Most schools and books about education argue for setting goals. Clearly the current flavor of Ed Reform is using goals to try to get results. a narrowed focussome unethical behavior (cases of cheating or mis-respresenting statistics)a massive decrease in intrinsic motivation – many teachers talk about the joy being tested out of teaching 7. 8. 9. 10.

Welcome! The Questioning Toolkit - Revised The first version of the Questioning Toolkit was published in November of 1997. Since then there has been substantial revision of its major question types and how they may function as an interwoven system. This article takes the model quite a few steps further, explaining more about each type of question and how it might support the overall investigative process in combination with the other types. photo ©istockphoto.com Section One - Orchestration Most complicated issues and challenges require the researcher to apply quite a few different types of questions when building an answer. Orchestration is the key concept added to the model since its first version. orchestrate: To combine and adapt in order to attain a particular effect: arrange, blend, coordinate, harmonize, integrate, synthesize, unify. As the researcher moves beyond mere gathering to discovering and inventing new meanings, the complexity and the challenge of effective orchestration grows dramatically. --- Essential Questions ---

10 strategies for lightning-quick feedback students can REALLY use Students crave feedback, but it has to be timely to matter. Here are some strategies for feedback students will WANT to read. (Wikimedia / Carla OLPC Wiki / CC BY-SA 3.0) Using homework assignments to give feedback is pokey. Think about the length of the feedback loop for traditional homework assignments: Teacher assigns homework to students.Students take it home (maybe) and work on it (maybe).Students turn it in the next day.Teacher grades and provides comments that night (if not completely swamped with other work)Teacher returns assignment the next day with feedback As teachers, we’re appalled that students take their graded work — with meaningful feedback — and throw it in the trash. But why wouldn’t they throw it in the trash? It takes work for students to take themselves back in time to when they were working on that assignment. The path of least resistance is NOT to do that mental back-tracking to apply slow feedback to a meaningless assignment. Bad move. Here are some ideas: 1. 2.

15 Ways to Know When Your Students Aren’t “Getting” It: A Guide to Formative Assessment Secondgradesilliness.blogspot.com via Pinterest 3. What Are We Going to Learn? At the start, instead of “What are the kids going to do?” or “What am I going to teach?” 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. bbc.co.uk via Pinterest 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Educationtothecore.com via Pinterest 15. Check out Action Pack on Assessment from ASCD, publisher of Educational Leadership® Magazine. 10 Smart Tools For Digital Exit Slips Snapshots Of Understanding? 10 Smart Tools For Digital Exit Slips by Ryan Schaaf, Assistant Professor of Technology, Notre Dame of Maryland University Do they get it? After an instructional lesson is over, educators are left with a classroom full of students looking at them. These are just a few of the questions reflective educators are left to contemplate after the bell has rung. The format of an exit ticket varies. In the age of digital learning, exit tickets are no longer confined to small slips of paper collected by educators as students leave their classrooms (although this method is still fine). Here are ten digital exit slip tools to choose from. Google Forms Educators can set up exit tickets with varying question types and submit requests to participate via email or sharable link. Socrative Socrative lets educators assess their students with educational activities on tablets, laptops or smartphones (ideal for BYOD environments). Plickers Geddit PollEverywhere ExitTicket VoiceThread lino