Eight years ago a thin gentleman in a black turtleneck and jeans got on stage and introduced a radical idea, a smart phone without a keyboard. People said it would never work. Eight years later, his company sold 13 million of these phones in two weeks. As I play with this phone, when I press down more things happen. Pictures, sounds, and actions occur. I look at my friends' phones, on some of them the display wraps around the sides. I have one friend who takes pictures of everything he sees with his phone. Growing up, a phone was a big boxy thing attached to the wall. My aunt was cool, she got a phone one year that looked like Mickey Mouse was holding it.
Where do these ideas come from? What pushes us to move our world forward? Is it the relentless pursuit of content and knowledge, the recitation of key information and algorithms? Or is it finding ways to explore the world differently? Could we benefit from pursuing time with divergent thoughts and ideas? Sir Ken Robinson believes so. In his speech regarding Changing the Educational Paradigm, he discusses creativity and divergent thinking and how participation in schools correlates with reduction of these values. Why, because we learn there are certain ways to do things.
Life doesn't need to be that way. While science class is an opportunity to breed inquiry and ask why, if we include engineering we begin to ask so what solution could you make. In science we observe a situation and begin to question what makes the situation occur. In engineering we see the situation and we say, well what can we do with this. Steve Jobs' team saw a phone and asked, what can we do with this? Instead of taking in the knowledge of this is an instrument that allows verbal communication between two parties, they saw an object that people carried that could be a lot more if we allowed it. They asked, could it be a map? a clock? a communication device? a camera? a weather tracker? By the engineers playing and asking questions they innovated a lot more.
Playing is something we see less and less in schools. Some will say it's a product of the video game/cell phone generation. Since students have these electronic gadgets, they don't socialize or play. However, my observational experience says otherwise. When alone, or with their parents, they don't choose to socialize. Although, I'm not sure teenagers and pre-teens ever wanted to socialize much with their parents. However, when students congregate, they want to talk, explore, and play.
My third grade child's teacher has done something radical this year. She has apparently read some research and decided that it would be more valuable if the children read for 30 minutes a night and didn't do other homework. The result in our house has been not only less conflict between parent and child but also a constant collection of Zoobs being played with, imaginary dialogues about lightsabers, and a multitude of odd Lego structures. His friend, who is in the same class, has arranged a near constant playdate each afternoon. When after school care ends, the party continues at one house or another. Children dashing from place to place having complex dialogues about things I quite frankly don't understand. Since neither child has homework, it's okay to play, socialize, and invent until about 7pm each night. The ideas they are coming up with are wild. The intricacies of the dialogues could be scripts for a screen play. When we let children's imaginations run, they innovate.
Innovation can happen in the classroom as well as at home. Throughout the country, schools and classrooms are creating Makerspaces where children build, innovate, and invent. School leaders and teachers are beginning to understand that learning isn't simply intaking other people's ideas and regurgitating them but also asking what could this possibly become or how could you make this better and different. In some classrooms, teachers are understanding that reading and writing can be amazingly better if the children read books written by other members of the class and write scripts that others can act out. Innovation is something we need to encourage and nurture. To do so, we need make the time and space to play.
“Bean heard him climb into bed. He got up from the floor and did likewise. He thought of a half dozen ideas before he went to sleep. Ender would be pleased—every one of them was stupid.”
Excerpt From: Orson Scott Card. “Ender's Game.” iBooks.
Life doesn't need to be that way. While science class is an opportunity to breed inquiry and ask why, if we include engineering we begin to ask so what solution could you make. In science we observe a situation and begin to question what makes the situation occur. In engineering we see the situation and we say, well what can we do with this. Steve Jobs' team saw a phone and asked, what can we do with this? Instead of taking in the knowledge of this is an instrument that allows verbal communication between two parties, they saw an object that people carried that could be a lot more if we allowed it. They asked, could it be a map? a clock? a communication device? a camera? a weather tracker? By the engineers playing and asking questions they innovated a lot more.
Playing is something we see less and less in schools. Some will say it's a product of the video game/cell phone generation. Since students have these electronic gadgets, they don't socialize or play. However, my observational experience says otherwise. When alone, or with their parents, they don't choose to socialize. Although, I'm not sure teenagers and pre-teens ever wanted to socialize much with their parents. However, when students congregate, they want to talk, explore, and play.
My third grade child's teacher has done something radical this year. She has apparently read some research and decided that it would be more valuable if the children read for 30 minutes a night and didn't do other homework. The result in our house has been not only less conflict between parent and child but also a constant collection of Zoobs being played with, imaginary dialogues about lightsabers, and a multitude of odd Lego structures. His friend, who is in the same class, has arranged a near constant playdate each afternoon. When after school care ends, the party continues at one house or another. Children dashing from place to place having complex dialogues about things I quite frankly don't understand. Since neither child has homework, it's okay to play, socialize, and invent until about 7pm each night. The ideas they are coming up with are wild. The intricacies of the dialogues could be scripts for a screen play. When we let children's imaginations run, they innovate.
The Second Calvin & Hobbes Wiki - Character by Bill Patterson
Innovation can happen in the classroom as well as at home. Throughout the country, schools and classrooms are creating Makerspaces where children build, innovate, and invent. School leaders and teachers are beginning to understand that learning isn't simply intaking other people's ideas and regurgitating them but also asking what could this possibly become or how could you make this better and different. In some classrooms, teachers are understanding that reading and writing can be amazingly better if the children read books written by other members of the class and write scripts that others can act out. Innovation is something we need to encourage and nurture. To do so, we need make the time and space to play.
“Bean heard him climb into bed. He got up from the floor and did likewise. He thought of a half dozen ideas before he went to sleep. Ender would be pleased—every one of them was stupid.”
Excerpt From: Orson Scott Card. “Ender's Game.” iBooks.
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