Worth Reading

Passing along a few good reads from the past couple of weeks.


1. Where Design, Engineering Meet (Harvard Gazette)- Mohsen Mostafavi, dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design at GSD, and Francis J. Doyle III, the John A. Paulson Dean and John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS, discussed the origins and goals of a new graduate degree program at Harvard.

The composition and diversity of each cohort is critical. If you go back to the engineering approach or design approach from decades ago, the disciplines existed in silos. If you’re in an engineering firm, you might bring in mechanical engineers for one piece of a project, chemical engineers for another piece, computer scientists for a different piece. They really were islands, and they had to put the pieces together, and that was often a very ad hoc process. Here, we’re breaking down boundaries. That’s not to say we’re creating jacks-of-all-trades, completely cross-trained individuals, but we are preparing individuals to take a multidisciplinary mindset into a project environment and work across fields. It’s not that we’re just adding four or five disciplines and getting whatever aggregate product would come from that. We are building teams that can be more innovative in how they cross boundaries and collaborate.

This is the future of how things will be done in the real world. Students are not getting plugged into traditional silos of very narrow expertise. They’re being forced to work on teams that require multiple skills. Diversity of thinking approaches, of backgrounds, of work experiences: All of these things will lend to the ultimate success of the program.

2. Five Critical Skills to Empower Learners In The Digital Age (Sung)- Alan November, a former teacher turned lecturer, consultant and author, challenged teachers to rethink how they start the school year by outlining skills that are crucial to students to learn in the first five days of school.

3. Seeing Struggling Math Learners as 'Sense Makers', not 'Mistake Makers' (Schwartz)- 

“My goal is for them to become the truthmakers,” Wees said. “I’m trying to build a mathematical community where something is true when everyone agrees it’s true.” To do that, he asks students to talk through mathematical ideas, struggle with them and give one another feedback. “A major goal of math classrooms should be to develop people who look for evidence and try to prove that things are true or not true,” Wees said. “You can do that at any age”

4. Four Pillars of Great Teaching (Reich)- 

The first job of a teacher is not to explain things clearly, it's to inspire students to want to learn. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery writes, "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

5. Redesigning A Design Program:  How Carnegie Mellon University is Developing A Design Curricula for the 21st Century (Irwin)- the thought process and rationale for redesigning curricula for the Carnegie Mellon Design School is shared.

Design is ubiquitous- we live the majority of our lives in the designed or 'built' world, and design is connected to many of the large problems confronting society.  However, its very ubiquity gives it the potential to play a key role in the resolution of these same issues.  Design is inherently a problem-solving process and fundamental skills of the designer are the ability to look for meaningful problems, frame them within appropriate contexts, and design a process for developing and implementing a solution.

6.  To Get Into MIT's New Design Program, Students Must Score High On The 'Love Metric' (Thys)- explores the type of thinking and skills valued by the MIT Design School

“The analogy I use is that people learn instruments,” Kressy says as we talk in the big studio the students are occupying in MIT’s vintage Building N-52. “They learn to play violin and cello and tympani and bass and piano, and they become virtuosos in these sort of instruments. But when you take these people together and you make them play together, it’s a whole ‘nother ball game. All of sudden you have to respond to your fellow musicians.”

The task: build instruments from found materials. And boy did the students find materials. Mechanical engineer Maria Tafur, from Bogota, made a clarinet from a carrot.

Worth Reading...

It has been some time since my last post.  I want to share some good postings, I have come across the past few weeks.


1. Boston Designers Discuss the Creative Process (DeLuca)-  BostInno's 3rd annual State of Innovation brings together more than 1,000 business leaders and professionals for keynotes from high-profile speakers, cutting-edge panel discussions with industry leaders, engaging workshops and endless networking opportunities. This year, a series of workshops with partner General Assembly will focus on skills needed to fuel Boston's growth, including design thinking. 

2. Tomorrow's Learning Today (Heick)- I am never the biggest fan of lists, however, I like the second point raised in the post about the shift from standards to habits of mind.  

We’ve talked about this one quite a bit–most recently in Changing What We Teach, for example. This is among the biggest and most powerful ideas in “future learning,” and should be central to any meaningful discussion therein. What are students learning, why are they learning it, and what are they doing with what they know? In short, the shift from purely academic standards to critical thinking habits supports personalized, 21st century learning through a preceding shift from institution to learner.

3. 10 Buildings Show the Future of Architecture (Kushner)- interesting perspectives on how to play with a space and in particular, recognition of a personal design firm favorite, Snarkitecture

4. Feedback Revolutionizes How We Assess Learning (Barnes)- a teacher shares how he moved from a traditional grading system of handing out letters and percentages to where assessment is provided through conversation.  

Years ago, I decided to eliminate traditional grades from my classroom. I stopped placing numbers, percentages and letters on anything and everything my students completed. Instead, we assessed learning through conversation and narrative feedback. While students quickly grew accustomed to discussing their activities and projects, it was important to give them a system that would make sense. The formality and rigidity of grades disappeared, replaced by the simplicity ofSE2R — Summarize, Explain, Redirect, Resubmit.

5.3D Print Revolution (D'Aveni)- now that the 3D print revolution is underway what are some of the next level of developments to consider

Third, leaders must consider the strategic implications as whole commercial ecosystemsbegin to form around the new realities of 3-D printing. Much has been made of the potential for large swaths of the manufacturing sector to atomize into an untold number of small “makers.” But that vision tends to obscure a surer and more important development: To permit the integration of activities across designers, makers, and movers of goods, digital platforms will have to be established. At first these platforms will enable design-to-print activities and design sharing and fast downloading. Soon they will orchestrate printer operations, quality control, real-time optimization of printer networks, and capacity exchanges, among other needed functions. The most successful platform providers will prosper mightily by establishing standards and providing the settings in which a complex ecosystem can coordinate responses to market demands

6. Push, Don't Crush the Students (Richtel)- the article talks about encouraging students to strive for challenging goals and not placing undue pressure on kids.  

Experts say such clusters typically occur when suicide takes hold as a viable coping mechanism — as a deadly, irrational fashion. But that hasn’t stopped this community from soul searching: Does a culture of hyper-achievement deserve any blame for this cluster?  The answer is complex, bordering on the contradictory: No, the pressure to succeed is not unique, nor does it cause a suicide cluster in itself, but the intense reflection underway here has unearthed a sobering reality about how Silicon Valley’s culture of best in class is playing out in the schools

7. The Backwards Brain Bicycle

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8. The Best Kindergarten You Have Ever Seen- At this school in Tokyo, five-year-olds cause traffic jams and windows are for Santa to climb into. Meet: the world's cutest kindergarten, designed by architect Takaharu Tezuka. In this charming talk, he walks us through a design process that really lets kids be kids

Worth Reading...

Passing along a few interesting posts.  


1. Looking at Student Work With MathMistakes.org (Reich)- Harvard ed professor talks about cultivating in future teachers a desire to examine and talk about student work.  This is more than just glancing at student work but developing a meaningful professional conversation around student product.

In my Introduction to Education class, one of my goals is for students to get a sense of the value of looking at student work. Not just glancing at it, reading it, or grading it, but really trying to understand what we can learn about students' thinking by examining their performances. 

2. Pace Final- a final exam from an AP Lit teacher.  I appreciate the reflective presence embedded into this final exam.

Create a product of your choosing that demonstrates what you've learned about yourself, about how learning/understanding/education works, and about others this year in PACE. Apply vocabulary from this year into your final product and create something worthy of being displayed and discussed. Additionally, complete the graphic organizers based on the reading choices provided to you and be prepared to participate in a graded class discussion of your projects, the readings, and the year in review.

3. Greater Possibilities (Richardson)- continuing on the theme of making class a place where students get to work on things that matter.

As usual, Gary is spot on here. Last week during my Australia visit, I was asked on a panel how we prevent kids from being disruptive or off task when every one of them has a device in the classroom. I think the questioner was almost shocked when I started my answer by channelling Gary, saying “I don’t think we give kids enough credit in their ability to stay focused when they’re doing work that matters.”

4. You Can Always Add.  You Can't Subtract (Meyer)- providing space for students to ask questions and to define a problem themselves as opposed to having a text book or an adult do it for them.

In sum, much of the problem has been pre-formulated, which is a pity, seeing as how mathematicians and cognitive psychologists and education researchers agree that formulating the problem leads to success and interest in solving the problem.

So again I have to remind myself to be less helpful and be more thoughtful instead.

5. Catholic Prep Chain Helps Detroit's Minority Students Go On To College (Guerra)- approach taken to provide high school students with meaningful internships.

Four days a week, Idalis Longoria does what pretty much all high school juniors do. She goes to school, takes notes in class, hangs out in the cafeteria with her friends - but on the fifth day of the week - well that's when Longoria trades in her Catholic school uniform for a pair of light blue scrubs.

6. Schools Fight To Skip Standardized Tests, But Keep Learning Standards High (Kamnetz)- how one school district in Kentucky is by-passing standardized exams in favor of homegrown authentic performance-based assessments.  Please watch the case of the hungry hound...

One assignment in particular captured Swann’s attention. “The teacher asked the students to design an amusement park ride. They had all the math in there, and physics, and it just really sparked something in me: That math doesn’t have to be this boring class with lectures and standardized tests. I said, ‘Let’s take this back to Danville.’”

7. The Fire Hydrant Gets Its First Major Redesign in 100 Years- great little piece about striving to amke something better

Today's hydrants break, leak, and freeze, sometimes costing people their lives. The tamper-proof and incredibly durable Sigelock Spartan, designed by a former New York firefighter, is intended to work when people need them.

8. Amazing Perspective in GoPro Videos (Fryer)- "I have seen the GoPro camera and been a little more aware of it because how our church videographers have used one in the past few months to create some pretty stunning perspective videos about individuals. This video from GoPro, however, takes the idea of first person perspective to a whole different level."

Worth Reading

Here is some weekend reading/viewing material....


1. The Story of a 3D Printed Whistle (Crosby)- elementary students working on developing a whistle- much harder than one might think to engineer a high quality whistle

I’ve seen many examples of figures printed out on a 3D printer … and they are impressive. Students have to figure out and problem solve coding the design to get it just right. But this is different in that students aren’t just printing out a figure that looks like a whistle, they are using the engineering design process to make a whistle that actually works 

2. Marymount’s ‘Come Alive’ Event Inspires Student Creativity, Ingenuity (Seguel)- coverage of Marymount of Santa Barbara "Creativity, Engineering and Coding Come Alive" event

Marymount Head of School Andrew Wooden explained Marymount’s new Design Thinking program in more depth: “Design Thinking is not just about kids building things, but about learning to approach challenges of all kinds, learning to use and trust trial and error, and finding creative solutions to problems.”

3. For Students the Importance of Doing Work That Matters (Richardson)- does the work we do with students matter in that matters in the real world and has a purpose outside of the classroom

Still, we can start small, can’t we? What if we took 10% of what we’re currently doing and handed it over to our students, asking them to meet the standard or the outcome we’ve set for them in a way that they care about and that had a purpose beyond the classroom? What if we created opportunities for them to educate, entertain, inspire, or connect with people from all over the globe who might be sincerely influenced by the work they’re doing? And what if we asked them to assess their own work in ways that matter to them, ways that inform them what worked, what didn’t work, and how they might do it differently down the road?

Schools and classrooms should support a deep culture of “doing work that matters,” where the adults in the building serve as models for the type of creating and learning we might expect from kids.

4. Beyond Laptops and The Power of Vulnerability (Cofino)- as teachers we all have something to share and something to learn

When we all appreciate that each of us has something to share and something to learn, we really do open ourselves up to the possibility of becoming better than we were when we started.

5. Design for Extreme Affordability- is a two quarter, multidisciplinary, project-based course open to Stanford University students. Students work in teams, using design thinking methods, to develop products and services that serve the needs of the world's poor 

Extreme will be a class that I talk about for the rest of my life, and will undoubtedly influence my future career choices, management style and approach to problem solving. 

6. Schooled (Russakoff)- inside look at leadership of a large urban school district

7. Stanford’s Dave Evans & Bill Burnett on Using Design Thinking to Address the “Wicked Problem” of Designing Your Life & Career- 

The research says that maybe only two or three out of ten people actually have a passion that they’ve identified, that they can work into. We believe that actually, passion turns out to be what you develop after you find the things that you enjoy doing.

8. Chris and Jon Boggiano on Radius of Play

Worth Reading..

Sharing highlights from the past week.

1. Creativity Becomes An Academic Discipline (Pappano)- growing number of degrees undergraduate and graduate in creativity

Traditional academic disciplines still matter, but as content knowledge evolves at lightning speed, educators are talking more and more about “process skills,” strategies to reframe challenges and extrapolate and transform information, and to accept and deal with ambiguity.

2. Forget Coding, Let's Change Up How We Teach Math (Burt)- leveraging Math (as a space) to teach code and to eternally address questions of will I ever use this outside of school...

One of the most common obstacles we hear about why schools don’t teach computer science is that there aren’t enough qualified educators out there to meet the demands.  But there’s a trained army of math teachers out there willing to find new and better ways of delivering their content, that with a small amount of preparation could no doubt be leading the way.  So, how can we make time in their curricula and schedule to make it happen?

3. Passion-Based Learning, Day 1: Probing Minecraft's Appeal (Renwick)- thoughts about why Minecraft appeals to students and what lessons to learn from why there is an intense interest in Minecraft.

When someone enters Minecraft, the world is their’s to create. They are in control of their destiny. What a stark contrast to our students’ lives in school. The standards are set, the assessments are pre-determined, and the plans have been prepared. All without the students’ input. If this is their learning to own, we don’t always do a very good job of including them in the process.

4. Making Ourselves Vulnerable (Richardson)

Walk down the vendor floor of any big edu-conference and you’ll see our obsession with making learning less messy and less “vulnerable.” Struggle, patience, courage, persistence, failure, passion…none of these are quantifiable to the degree that reformers or most edupreneurs need them to be to “count.” Yet schools will spend time and money (lots of it) on stuff that organizes, compartmentalizes, personalizes, standardizes, and captures “learning” in order to be compared “successfully” to other districts down the road.

5. Rethinking Education With Design Thinking (Pfau)-highlights schools in the Bay area where design thinking influences work with kids

Students not only master the concepts embedded within each project, they also exercise their skills of collaborating with teammates, investigating their topic thoroughly, using empathy to generate ideas for solutions, prototyping, testing and most importantly, they learn that failure is not a setback. As Gever explained in his talk, the retention of information that kids have as a result of this process is significantly higher. More significantly, learning to identify the need for and acquire skills in response to problem solving situations is a life long skill set that will better shape these kids to confront productive careers that address real world problems.

6. School In the Cloud Report- A brief introduction to the School In the Cloud project

7. Art, made with coding: calling future interactive artisits- In between creating masterpieces like the Sistine Chapel and “Madonna and Child,” Michelangelo dissected cadavers in the hopes of understanding how the human body worked so he could paint it accurately. He’s not the only one: there has long been a connection between science and art. And it’s true today more than ever, as modern artists use technology for inspiration, inventing ways to give life to code, letting it spill from the screen and onto the canvas.

Invent to Learn

Sharing a few select highlights from Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering and Engineering In The Classroom by Sylvia Libow Martinez & Gary Stager.  

While school traditionally separates art and science, theory, and practice, such divisions are artificial. The real world just doesn’t work that way! 

Making is a way of bringing engineering to young learners. Such concrete experiences provide a meaningful context for understanding abstract science and math concepts. For older students, making combines disciplines in ways that enhance the learning process for diverse student populations and opens the doors to unforeseen career

What is needed at both the university and secondary level are teachers who indeed know their subject but who approach it from a constantly interdisciplinary point of view – i.e., knowing how to give general significance to the structures they use and to reintegrate them into overall systems embracing the other disciplines with the spirit of epistemology to be able to make their students constantly aware of the relations between their special province and the sciences as a whole. Such men are rare today.

digital fabrication had the potential to be the ultimate construction kit, a disruptive place in schools where students could safely make, build, and share their creations. I designed those spaces to be inviting and gender-neutral, in order to attract both the high-end engineering types, but also students who just wanted to try a project with technology, or enhance something that they were already doing with digital fabrication.

Now you can make the actual thing you are trying to test. Best of all, gone are the days of helplessness, dependency, and consumption. Making lets you take control of your life, be more active, and be responsible for your own

From constructivist theories of psychology we take a view of learning as a reconstruction rather than as a transmission of knowledge. Then we extend the idea of manipulative materials to the idea that learning is most effective when part of an activity the learner experiences as constructing a meaningful product. 

Tinkering is what happens when you try something you don’t quite know how to do, guided by whim, imagination, and curiosity. When you tinker, there are no instructions – but there are also no failures, no right or wrong ways of doing things. It’s about figuring out how things work and reworking them. Contraptions, machines, wildly mismatched objects working in harmony – this is the stuff of tinkering. Tinkering is, at its most basic, a process that marries play and inquiry.

We teach children science and math so they can make the world a better place, not so they can pass tests. Edith Ackermann says: In the practice of design, the purpose is not to represent what is out there (or model how things are) but to imagine what is not (or envision how things could be) and to bring into existence what is imagined. Creators are fabricators of possibilities embodied: They both make and make-up things!  

“I’m done” are two words you should never hear in the maker classroom! When a student (or team of students) thinks they are finished, they should seek opportunities to improve

City Modern Trip

On Thursday several teachers traveled to New York City with 15 11th and 12th graders to participate in City Modern, a week-long festival celebrating design in New York.  This is the second year in a row we took students in to NYC for the event.  In both cases students were part of a small theme based academy.  As part of the academy students work on a capstone project and take courses in which they explore the concept of design and delve into the creative process.  

What's great about the trip (the itinerary is provided below) is that students are exposed to a broad spectrum of design.  As the day evolved students were naturally compelled to reflect on distinct design elements.  Additionally, students are afforded the chance to interact with professional designers.  In particular during the last stop of the day students spent time in a working studio reviewing products and projects as well as listening to professionals present an unfiltered view of the design process.  

The unique ways students are exposed to design makes the day worthwhile.  Whether it is observing artifacts in a gallery or the A & D building or listening to designers passionately talk about their craft, students are engaged in truly authentic learning experiences.

Furthermore, we asked students to take as many photos throughout the day.  Looking at an object through the lens of a camera often presents a different perspective.

We wanted students to examine a product or larger installation from varying vantage points.  The hope is that we can compile all of the stills into a rough slideshow.  Collaboratively, we could move through the slideshow commenting on and discussing what the cohort experienced during our trip to NYC.

City Modern Trip Itinerary

• Stop #1- Paula Cooper Gallery to view the Sol LeWitt exhibit
• Stop #2- walk on the High Line exploring the transformation of the old west side rail lines
• Stop #3- apprentice talk moderated by Dwell magazine:
• Built in Maine, Thos. Moser furniture is 100% American-designed, engineered and built. Each piece celebrates the natural beauty of wood with unembellished, graceful lines that echo numerous historic antecedents including traditional and modern forms. This year, Thos. Moser invited two aspiring furniture designers to Maine where they experienced first-hand, the techniques and philosophy that has defined the Moser aesthetic for 40 years. The panel discussion on Oct 3 featuring Thos. Moser designer Adam Rogers, the emerging designers, and a Dwell editor will examine the importance of melding craftsmanship into the age of high-tech design. The “apprentices” will share their experiences, and using their own pieces, describe their appreciation for the Thos. Moser approach.
• Stop #4- self-guided exploration through the A&D building
• Stop #5- travel to Brooklyn to spend time at Snarkitecture