LAUNCH...

Sharing a few highlights from LAUNCH: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out The Maker In Every Student by John Spencer and A.J. Juliana.

We are now seeing a new divide emerge — a Creative Chasm between those who passively consume and those who actively create.

In our experience, when students are thinking creatively, they are fully engaged in their learning. This increased student engagement often leads to more buy-in from students and ultimately deeper learning.

There is no guarantee that creative thinking will increase test scores, but who would you rather have take a test: a disengaged trained test-taker or a fully engaged creative thinker?

Design thinking provides a way to think about creative work. It starts with empathy, working to really understand the problems people are facing before attempting to create solutions.

Launching our work into the real world and in front of an actual audience is what makes creative work so scary, but also so rewarding.

Every time your students get the chance to be authors, filmmakers, scientists, artists, and engineers, you are planting the seeds for a future you could have never imagined on your own.

how often they put their early thoughts and inklings out into the world, in sketches, dashed-off phrases and observations, bits of dialogue, and quick prototypes. Instead of arriving in one giant leap, great creations emerged by zigs and zags as their creators engaged over and over again with these externalized images.”

the Hacker is a little more subversive, actively working to tear down a broken system in order to create something better. In this sense, the Hacker is inherently destructive.

Hackers don’t always destroy systems. Often, they find new ways to use a system, idea, or resource. Think less “computer hacker” and more “life hacks.”

Everyone possesses important skills and talents, but it’s only when we honor and tap into those skills and talents that we, together, can do exceptional creative work.

Children are naturally fascinated by the wonder of their world. Hang out with a four-year-old and take a tally of all the questions they ask. Unfortunately, schools are more often designed to help students answer questions rather than question answers. Students rarely have the chance to ask whatever question they have and go off on a rabbit trail to find the answers.