Background This year I’ve scripted the curriculum for NOVA Lab a bit more tightly during the first marking period. In the past, things were more open, exploratory, and…well…chaotic (see map below). There was a beauty to that. We discovered opportunities, lunged at hunches, and explored numerous though tangential paths of thought. But also a lotContinue reading “Introducing: Design Build Challenge!”
Tag Archives: Design
Gettin’ on the Purpose-Based, Design-Driven Soul Train
Check out what Disney and Coursera have cooked up to get people connected with meaningful, purpose-full learning.
Purpose and the Story We Tell Ourselves: Wayfinding our own Oceans.
In 1995, the prolific warbler Neil Young (and members of Pearl Jam) released Mirror Ball. The album featured one of Young’s iconic cries of independence, “I’m the Ocean.” With a chorus declaring the title’s metaphysical conceit and lyrics probing smaller, stranger metaphysical comparisons (eg. “I’m an accident/I was driving way too fast), Young contrasts beingContinue reading “Purpose and the Story We Tell Ourselves: Wayfinding our own Oceans.”
The Most Amazing Day(s): Teaching as Experience Design
For the past few days, ever since inNOVAtion Lab’s phenomenal trip to Corbett Inc.’s Fluxspace, I’ve been trying to figure out what has been happening in class. The trip to Flux was a highlight of a very young year, and it comes on the heels of another highlight, our trip to the B.Phl Innovation Festival Continue reading “The Most Amazing Day(s): Teaching as Experience Design”
Learning in Flux: The Joy of Purpose-Based Education
At the beginning of the year, I discovered that a local design firm in my neighborhood was opening an incubator/maker/presentation/learning space in a turn of the 20th-century woollen mill. Dubbed Flux, the space was exactly what I have been trying to create in my own school, only about 7 times bigger! So I had toContinue reading “Learning in Flux: The Joy of Purpose-Based Education”
Brains, Cheetos, and a Theory of Creativity
(The final installment of my blog posts about the B.Phl Innovation Festival. Here’s the first post. Here’s the second.) On Thursday, Oct. 17, 2019, 31 of the 54 students enrolled in NOVA Lab attended the third day of the first annual B.Phl Innovation Festival. While our trip was somewhat shortened (traffic on the abominable SchukyllContinue reading “Brains, Cheetos, and a Theory of Creativity”
Philadelphia’s B.Phl Innovation Festival
A few weeks ago one of the students in NOVA Lab informed me of an innovation festival being hosted in Philadelphia. After checking it out on the web, I was convinced this would be a place for our students to learn why innovation and design thinking were so important to the economy they’d soon beContinue reading “Philadelphia’s B.Phl Innovation Festival”
Open Ideo: Design Thinking For Social Impact
I’ve grown fond of the way we’ve been discussing people’s ideas, offering pushback and extending their thinking in new and prosperous ways. Don Wettrick’s “ROTH IRA” Cycle is something we’ll have to struggle through a few times before we get the pacing and rhythms down, but that’s the same with orchestrating any large group (andContinue reading “Open Ideo: Design Thinking For Social Impact”
PA Dept. of Transportation Design Challenge
Wolf Administration’s “Innovations Challenge” Invites Students to Develop Technologies, Solutions to Combat Roadway Litter Harrisburg, PA – The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced today that students in grades 9-12 are invited to participate in the third PennDOT Innovations Challenge which encourages students to use their problem-solving,Continue reading “PA Dept. of Transportation Design Challenge”
When a Plan Comes Together
Since Phil Holcombe’s Monday discussion with our classes on the value and methods of branding, we’ve been discovering the common signals that seem to emanate from the documents we’ve explored about this class and others like it. Today we got to the point where the two classes had (as smaller groups) defined their common signalsContinue reading “When a Plan Comes Together”
Innovation Lab 