Week 1

The lesson began with an introduction of the course Innovation lab. Lilian presented the aims of the course, the layout, program and the assessments. We then we a few minutes to write our own goals. Overall, personally within this course I want to become more creative and innovative, developing my own creative confidence and discover more creative methods which I can use, apply and adapt back in my home country! I hope when I look back on my experience of this course I will be able to say that!

After this we were asked to meet a stranger and present your story of innovation. My 'stranger' was Bjarke from Denmark. I told him about an outdoor mathematics trail that I created for my pupils during mathematics week in my home country. Where children go around following clues to lot of places where they have to solve mathematical problems. Although I didn't realise this was innovative as I started to gain an understanding of what innovation was I started to become more aware of innovative methods I had used unaware to myself within my teaching and within my own life.

After this we got int groups of four. This was a good excerise as we were able to hear more peoples ideas and understandings of innovation than we had previously and for me who had no understanding or knowledge of the concept before it was very useful to hear others ideas so I could form a better understanding for myself. The next exercise was that we have to tell our story in a bigger group, choose one of the stories to tell to the rest of the class and find a definition about what innovation actually is. This was defintely more challenging when every person in the room was talking but it was a good way of sharing information and hearing others opinions. Following each of us telling our own stories we decided to share Carlos' idea of innovation with the rest of the class as we liked it the best and was something we had never heard of before. It was an innovative approach to conflict resolution where if two children were fighting they had to stand in either the mouth or ear corner. When you were in the mouth you were allowed to talk and when you were in the ear you had to listen, Which I think is an innovative way of facilitating and managing conflicts and arguments between two people and was a child friendly approach and something I defintely want to use myself in my classroom back home!

Alongside sharing our stories and hearing everyone elses in the class I came up with an understanding and definition of what innovation is. It is clear already that I am developing and learning from this process already!

What is your definition of innovation?
Innovation is a term which can have many different meanings and when listening to my classmates views on innovation it was clear that we all saw it as different things. Some saw it as teaching through or with technology or finding new or different purposes for something. However, in my opinion innovation is about using approaches to problem solving using a new or better approach that has previously been used. These approaches involve creativity and thinking outside the box as well as having a good understanding of what you are trying to solve.

How does your expierence with design thinking fit your ideas about innovation?
My expierence with the design thinking exercise really helped develop my understanding and awareness of innovation. I believe that my ideas matched what I had previously thought as through the exercise we had to creatively come up with ways to solve the problem that our partner had. However, we also had to have a sound understanding of what their problem was so we could do this effectively. We used a 5 step approach based on the model by Stanford University to creatively solve their problems in a logical and structured progression.

Next we participated in the gift giving experience. I was immediately intrigued by what this was as it was clear it was going to be an interactive and  hands on lesson, something which I am not very used to at my university at home. However the lesson was a bit confusing and very structured because we only had 60 minutes to create something by following the five steps of design thinking:

1) Empathize: develop a deep understanding of the challenge

2) Define: clearly articulate the problem you want to solve

3) Ideate: brainstorm potential solutions. Select and develop your solution

4) Prototype: design a prototype to test all or part of your solution

5) Test: engage in a continuous short cycle innovation process to continually improve your design.

Although I hate feeling pressured and under time constraints to do anything, yet alone get to know my partner, understand and figure out his story and identify his needs and then create and present my prototype for him I do realise not in retrospect that deadlines are necessary as they push you to work more quickly and efficiently and often you are most creative when you have a time limit on your work.

However, I did like the layout of the 5 design thinking steps. It was clear what was required in every stage and it was a logical approach to reach the end goal where we had to recreate a gift giving experience. Although at this stage I wouldn't necessarily call my self a creative person I can definitely feel that my confidence is improving slowly as I get stuck into this process so watch this space!