Posts tagged innovation
Columbia Professor and GZA Aim To Teach Science Through Hip Hop
“Next month, the two men, along with the popular hip-hop lyrics Web site Rap Genius, will announce a pilot project to use hip-hop to teach science in 10 New York City public schools. The pilot is small, but it
s architects’ goals are not modest. Dr. Emdin, who has written a book called “Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation,” hopes to change the way city teachers relate to minority students, drawing not just on hip-hop’s rhymes, but also on its social practices and values…”
Please Help Judge Our Seniors’ Design Class Inventions!
The seniors in Design for Social Impact at the Lawrenceville School recently spent time coming up with innovative designs and prototypes for new, novel products.
WHAT IS INNOVATION?
“We don’t really have a good fix on the concept. We know it when we see it. But this much is clear: it encompasses more than just scientific or technological breakthroughs, as becomes apparent when you look at which companies are considered the most innovative. In the world of business rankings, it is very rare for a company to rank first in every survey, since the criteria often vary greatly. Yet when tackling innovation, one company, Apple, utterly dominates the lists, whoever puts them together.
So how would one define Apple’s innovations? It is not a company that focuses on pathbreaking science and spews out new inventions and patents. The 2010 Booz & Co. ranking of companies by their expenditures on research and development places Apple 81st. As a percentage of its revenue, the company spends less than half of what the typical computer and electronics company does and a fifth of what Microsoft spends. Apple’s innovations are powerful and profound, but they are often in the realms of design, consumer use and marketing. This is hardly unusual. In fact, the application of technology in service of a consumer need or business objective is what true innovation always has been.”
Tony Wagner: Addressing the Global Achievement Gap
Tony Wagner
- Students need NEW SKILLS for work, continuous learning & citizenship in a knowledge society for all students
- The net generation is differently motivated
- Reform vs. Reinvention – we need to re-frame the problem
What are the skills students today need (other than habits of the heart)
Seven Survival Skills
- Critical thinking and problem solving
leaders of business demand employees think critically and solve problems
What does it mean to think critically for leaders of business?
-ability to ask really good and the right questions - Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
Respect differences
Teams in industry are led by peers through influence [the lateralization of influence]
How do we teach teamwork to young people? - Agility and Adaptability
you need to be continuously learning - Initiative and Entrepeneurialism
Better to set more goals and succeed at 80% of them than to set few goals and succeed at all of them.
Fail early and fail often [this has been a theme through the gaming concept to]
How do we encourage failure rather than penalize it - Effective Oral and Written Communication
Kids cant write because they don’t know how to think
They don’t know how to write with voice — putting their own passion into it - Accessing and Analyzing information
there is a role for memorization, but it’s far far less than textbook bound curriculum of 20th century - Curiosity and Imagination
We used to make stuff, now we consume
We’ve created an economy on making people want things they do not have or do not need (material consumption)
How do we create the engine of our economy?
The Answer is Innovation
- We would it mean to educate every young person to be innovative?
- The roles surrounding education need to be very different
- Curiosity and Imagination are the wellspring of innovation
[Curiosity is about getting rid of threat and drawing attention to novelty
Designing for novelty]
