The Mindlab by Unitec: Design Thinking in Educational Leadership

Design Thinking in Education  
(Mindlab by Unitec: Week 13 - DCL) 

"How to Escape Education's Death Valley" (TED video)

"Sir Ken Robinson, chair of the UK Government's report on creativity, education and the economy, described research that showed that young people lost their ability to think in "divergent or non-linear ways", a key component of creativity. Of 1,600 children agKen Robinson -  ed three to five who were tested, 98% showed they could think in divergent ways. By the time they were aged eight to 10, 32% could think divergently. When the same test was applied to 13 to 15-year-olds, only 10% could think in this way. And when the test was used with 200,000 25-year-olds, only 2% could think divergently. . . . Education is driven by the idea of one answer and this idea of divergent thinking becomes stifled.' He described creativity as the 'genetic code' of education and said it was essential for the new economic circumstances of the 21st century." signed: (TESS, 25 March 2005)

 "Why Design Thinking?" Design Thinking for educators (Vimeo video) 

* Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions...

"Austin's Butterfly"  building excellence in student's work (Vimeo video)

"Rose, Bud, Thorn" - 2 minute PD (video)

* Convergent thinking is focusing on a limited number of choices as possibilities. Then you choose the “right” answer or course of action from among those choices..."

 

"The Deep" (video)

Design Thinking in Leadership

(Mindlab by Unitec: Week 13 - LDC)

"This week we focussed on Leadership and Design Thinking.

As education evolves, education is working hard to keep up fostering teaching that supports an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving.

Design Thinking is a hands-on problem finding and solving session that provides a forum for experiential learning. We apply Design Thinking methods such as posing short explorative questions that launch brainstorms. This builds a platform broad enough to uncover a wide range of solutions. We then learn to shape options that are sufficiently narrow to work through the problems using rapid prototyping techniques.

As a result, we are able to flesh out a number of needs that are both meaningful and actionable. Like designers, we will create simple three-dimensional models to get our ideas across."

*u.lab > Sydney. Design Thinking in Action
(Vimeo video)
Change Agents for Education through Design Thinking
(Vimeo video) 

Ewan McIntosh on Design Thinking for Librarians' and Teachers' professional development.