Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Learning

Design Thinking: not just for Design and Technology class

Design Thinking father Tim Brown blogged a while ago this great pleading from some of Britain's best designers and design educators for Government and schools to heighten the importance of design, technology, design thinking and prototyping skills through the vehicle of engineering subjects such as design and technology. It's a great clip, with many great reasonings as to why making learning concrete makes so much sense.

However, as impatient as I ever am, it's not enough.

 Design thinking - learning how to scope out and solve problems within seemingly vast areas of knowledge and experience - is something I believe belongs as a framework across the curriculum. It's as core a skill as literacy and numeracy, but a lot less well understood by teachers outside the design technology world. It needs the time, attention and thinking power of educators to be understood as a framework that contains so many of what we already know are powerful learning and teaching strategies for student improvement.

With NoTosh, I've been fortunate to foster and see the beginnings of this whole-school approach to design thinking in schools around the world, with our partners in the UK, US, Australia and the Far East. The Design Thinking School is taking hold in many areas, and challenging the status quo in some painful ways in others.

But challenging the status quo, that content cannot be covered unless a teacher or day-by-day curriculum is 'delivering' it, is what we're all about. And, school by school, that sea change - design thinking throughout the school, not just in the design technology class - is happening.

Free up time by freeing up the timetable

One of the schools we're working with has just redesigned its timetables from scratch, based on the energy of the students, and negotiates most of each day with every student at the beginning and middle of the day.

When we're working with our Design Thinking Schools there is one challenge that is guaranteed to come up through the initial empathy and observation phase. It's symptoms are often first cited in great numbers: time, energy, curriculum coverage. We use a period of structured observation of every aspect of the school and a building blocks exercise to discover these issues, to get observations, not just opinions or perceptions:

The problem itself is actually far simpler: the constraint of the timetable.

So, whether it's an independent girls school in Sydney or a family of primary schools in South London, we get them to reimagine what the timetable could look like, based on how energetic and "up for" learning children (and their teachers) are, and on how much time is required to make the most of certain activities.

We discover different surprises in every school. At MLC School, through a colour-coding exercise on everyone's timetables we discovered that both teachers and students were low in energy and thinking capacity for the first couple of hours on a Monday morning, with other low energy levels at the close of the day (and little humour for learning that was foisted upon them, as opposed to learning of which they were in control). No surprise there, really, except the timetable tips an unfair disadvantage on students that have mathematics then, rather than a session of phyiscal education or another practical subject with some movement. Students learn that projects need long tracts of uninterrupted time, but maths needs short, sharp, high energy time to keep concentration levels up. Or, when studying maths at a higher level, students yearn longer sessions on maths to get deep into new concepts, try them out and create something from them that contributes to another project.

At Rosendale School, South London, the teachers there have got around to publishing their two class timetables, clearly showing in light blue the 70% or so of the timetable that is up for negotiation, up for problem-finding and -solving.

This framework was designed with students, in much the same way as we did with high school students at MLC School in Sydney, to spot which parts of the day would lend themselves best to which kind of activity, and which activities were unmoveable, mostly down to visiting specialists needing these times, in the short-term at least.

As always, our brilliant teachers there are sharing their journey on their own blog, so if you want to see how this pans out through early 2012, just give them a regular visit or follow their posterous blog.

[#smartcityexpo] Carlo Ratti on the Living City: Harnessing Data To Reveal Stories

20 years ago if you wanted to win a Formula 1 Grand Prix race, you got yourself a good car and a good driver. Today, you need a team of scores of computer scientists, engineers and mathematicians, analysing your car's computer eveyr millisecond of every lap: without this data harvesting and analysis you will not win a race.

Today's cities, says, Ratti are heading the same way, and many are getting there already. Having placed billions of data connections in our cities over the past few years, cities are beginning to talk back to us, as the artefacts in MoMa's Talk To Me Exhibition show. And it's important that we harness this. Cities currently take up:

• 2% world surface
• 50% world population
• 75% of energy communication
• 80% of CO2 emissions

Managing cities based on cell phone use

During the World Cup final Ratti's team at MIT's Senseable City Lab saw how cell phone use matched the to and fro of people around the match itself and in cafés and homes around a city. How could this data be used to provide better information to public transport, buses and taxis?

How could rainfall be better predicted, but data on that be provided to taxis on the ground to better ship people around the city - the very question solved by Ratti's team in Singapore:

Tracking Waste

We spend so much energy in our cities and corporations sourcing the goods that make our products, but we know very little about where the waste from our products ends up. Here, harnessing data from pervasive geo-location-aware tags on 3000 products, Ratti's team were able to see the extent to which our waste travels around the world and back. Using this data, could our city fathers and corporations design better waste solutions, not just better sourcing solutions?

 

Planning a great response to great (and pervasive) data

Analysing data reveals stories - in a telecoms example in the United Kingdom Ratti's team looked at the two connections made with every network communication. This helped redraw the map of Great Britain, with Scotland the first, most clearly marked out communicative community, but with countries like Wales split in two, north and south, and the epic-centre of the echo chamber that is London-London communication clearly marked out:

This analysis of data can therefore suggest to us several things, and reveal the communities around which we might want to build specific services, which often don't match the "official" boundaries marked out by politicians. Something for Scotland will, naturally, be very different for something based around the communication habits of someone in London or Wales. More on the analysis process can be seen in this video and the research paper:

 

The Copenhagen Wheel - helping individuals to help the community

And how can data be harnessed on a level much more "on the ground", by citizens? The Copenhagen Wheel was a creation from the MIT Senseable City Lab, which makes life easier for the cyclist but uses their efforts to provide information about the city that can be used to help everyone:

It transforms ordinary bicycles quickly into hybrid e-bikes that also function as mobile sensing units. The Copenhagen Wheel allows you to capture the energy dissipated while cycling and braking and save it for when you need a bit of a boost. It also maps pollution levels, traffic congestion, and road conditions in real-time.

 

Conclusions (and questions that remain!)

• How can we make data more useful in other contexts than it currently is?
• What is there we can do to make the collection of data from one person actually helpful to them, while beneficial to the wider community, not just the political or adminstrative élites?
• What innovations in data collection for the common good are there to be found in education? But also in parenting, transport, food and drink, energy consumption and creation?

This talk was the opening keynote at Smart City Expo in Barcelona, Spain, where I'm giving a talk on how we can harness design thinking to better involve our communities, and our children, in building better cities.

Data Reveals Stories: Part Six | Graphs

This is one of a six-part series on how to harness data to reveal stories. It represents notes and follow-on links. If you want to take part in an exciting workshop to get your hands on real life data sets, create your own visualisations and learn how to share them, you can join me in Boston at Building Learning Communities for my pre-conference workshop this summer, or ask for it as one of our masterclass sessions. Many of the examples cited are from the information visualiser's Bible, Information is Beautiful: buy the book (in the UK | in the USA) or visit the blog.

Use one chart for a new purpose
Example:
A Periodic Table of Visualisation Methods:

 

Charts and time
Combine time, bar charts and graphical punch to show impact on complex stories.
Example:
The rising sea levels as they consume cities over time.

 

Charts and image
Interesting charting effects can be gained by superimposing one chart on top of many, many photos through Microsoft's Deep Zoom Composer software (free).
Example:
Winston Churchill Deep Zoom

Colour swatches
Use the metaphor from pantone cards from the painters' shop, or military ribbon bands, to transfer new information.
Example: Military ribbons as a means to explore the debauchery of rock bands, Information is Beautiful book.

Scattergraphs 2.0
Don't just plot dots on a scattergraph. Plot graphics that make your point.
Example:
Caffeine versus Calories: Buzz vs Bulge

 

Abstract geneology
Make a family tree to show the relative links between abstract concepts
Example:
A family tree of Britain's musical heritage (Information is Beautiful book)

What if we could see the ingredients of everything around us?

Christien Meindertsma hasn't stopped appearing in my life for the past ten days. The TED Talk, above, and her appearance in FastCompany as one of the designers set to save the world are one thing. But her compelling passion for labelling what is known about what everything around us might be made from hasn't stopped ratlling around inside my head. Over three years her quest was simple: to find out how pig parts make the world turn, and start getting people to realise what goes into every object around them.

From meat to shaving brush hairs to bullets, pigs are some of our dearest economic assets, and what do they get in return?

More importantly, though, bullets?! Those are just one of the surprising things in which a bit of pork goes a long way. Her wish that we perhaps knew a lot more about the ingredients of the world around us is a powerful one, as only by knowing can we begin to have meaningful conversations about what sustainability actually means.

Stephen Heppell's use of the word "ingredients" is an intriguing one, too, in reference to learning - he, like me, picks up learning ingredients from all over the world and seeks to blend them into intriguing recipes for those who want to have a taste. But what are those ingredients? Is there a list? A handy set of things that tend to go together well? Other things that have been proven the educational equivalent of basil and coffee (try it - it's awful).

While Christien works on pigs, plastics and plasterboard, I'm going to start compiling my own ingredients lists. You can write your own recipe book with them, and wouldn't it be great if every blog post about good or interesting practice also came with its virtual post-it note of "ingredients used in this learning", and maybe that must-have of "if you can't get hold of this ingredient, then try x - it works just as well".

Related articles

• How pig parts make the world turn: Christien Meindertsma on TED.com (ted.com)
• How Pig Parts Make the World Turn (eatdrinkbetter.com)
• From one pig -- bacon and 184 other things (cnn.com)

Ponoko helps you build your idea: personal factory online

Matt Jones' latest 'make' caught my eye: a shipping forecast rosary. I think it's more the nostalgia of finishing my dinner as a child listening to the exotic and far-flung-sounding German Bight and Fastnet, than any Catholic connotations, but it's also how he created it.

Ponoko allows you to submit your design idea and then, choosing from a wide range of beautiful materials and laser etching options, you can have it quoted, built, posted back to you doublequick. It's beautiful, allowing mere mortals like me to have our ideas made. It's CafePress for making things, as mum puts it.

For schools, I think there's something interesting in allowing that prototyping stage to be sped up. All too often, in the areas where we get closest to student-driven learning where we learn by making things, there is no time, space or money for prototyping several times before making the final product. In Craft, Design and Technology classes we prototype in isolation, theoretically, but then the learning we get from uncovering the real object is lost.

I don't think Ponoko is necessarily the answer, but I do love the speed element and the community of makers they're building up to help transform ideas into workable product. There's got to be a learning oportunity in there.

 

Related articles

• How One Startup Went From Science Fiction Concept to Real Product (readwriteweb.com)
• Friday Smackdown: Grue Fabue (solidsmack.com)
• Ponoko Teams Up With SparkFun To Help You Make Stuff (crunchgear.com)

[ #cefpi #tep10 ] The Seven Spaces of Technology in School Environments

The Seven Spaces of Technology in School Environments from Ewan McIntosh on Vimeo.

Matt Locke originally came up with the concept of the Six Spaces of Social Media. I added a seventh earlier this year, Data Spaces, and have played around with how education could harness these spaces, and the various transgressions between them, for learning.

This short presentation tackles the potential of adjusting our physical school environments to harness technology even better. What happens when we map technological spaces to physical ones?

Related articles

• [ #tep10 ] Charles Leadbeater: "pull learning" and learning from Chinese restaurants (edu.blogs.com)
• The Learning (B)log: Darren Kuropatwa's class scribes (downes.ca)
• [ #cefpi #tep10 ] Clicks & Bricks: When digital, learning and physical space meet (edu.blogs.com)
• SCIL - Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning (scil.nsw.edu.au)

Making impossible invisible magic with an iPad

The chaps at BERG are one team that I'd love to engage on designing what a school space should look like. Not content with reinventing how we might read through touch devices, several months before the iPad was launched, they've now taken the device and shown us that it's not for reading after all - it's for creating 3D light forms that can dance, write and recreate city-scapes before our eyes.

Watch their video in HD to see the finished result of their experimentations, read the blog to see how they did it and see the behind-the-scenes pics on Flickr:

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

[ #ghc GameHorizon ]: Jesse Schell On The Roadmap To The Gamepocalypse

Jesse Schell sees games reaching out to real life and real life is reaching into games. He imagines a world, and sees increasing evidence of, the gamespocolypse: where every part of your life is part of playing a game, from brushing your teeth to eating your Cheerios. Some people think this sounds horrible, others like Jesse think it's going to come anyway, so we might as well learn how to do it as well as possible.

Roadmap to the gamepocalypse

View more presentations from Jesse Schell.

1. Social Networking
Networks - let's say, erm, Facebook - propagate material that is helpful, funny, controversial or just amazing. Material that is poor quality, that is viral in a bad way, bombard us every day. Our Facebook immune systems are getting stronger, repelling good content as well as bad, since it's easier to turn off all notifications from games or from my Wall on the basis of a few bad experiences, rather than to filter for the good stuff.

For developers, this means the spammy ways of sharing your games and ideas have to change.

2. Microtransactions
These have been a huge change in the games industry, and their success is unmitigated - just look at an app store to see this. Just because you're not making money out of microtransactions doesn't mean that the principle is wrong or not happening. This whole model scares console manufacturers who are loathe to move from their large-value consoles to the many times 0.99c transactions

3. Advergaming
Billboards in games, when done badly, are done badly. But making games around products (e.g. M&Ms, Dr Pepper, Sweetarts) might feel a bit better. Ultimately, though...

4. Retail gaming
Retail gaming is bringing huge potential in partnerships between Farmville-maker Zynga and 7-Eleven grocery stores. By choosing which Farmville-themed cup you'll have for your milkshake you are actually playing Farmville.

5. Brands and gaming - Extrinsic rewards
TV Commercial time has, since 1950 to 2010, gone from 13% to 36% of the television schedule. Its encroachment into the games space is inevitable. When we think about how the best brands have used other media, we see how it can work for both brand and individual: Harley Davidson and Tattoos.

6. Wearable gaming - disposable sensors
The Oral B Smiley face that tells you you've brushed enough, the Nike+ shoe that games your running and walking, the sleeptracker app on iPhone that tries to wake you at the best point towards the end of your sleep cycle...

7. Beauty
Everything is becoming more and more beautiful, and this trend towards beauty effects every aspect of life and especially digital media. Coming up with functional just doesn't work any more.

8. TV
Television is evolving. Fast. 3D isn't new (in 1849 the stereoscopic lens came into existence), yet we don't see 3D photography, 3D signage or 3D books everywhere. Are we really going to see this take off in such a ubiquitous fashion? That said, by Christmas 2010 1 in 5 televisions in the UK will be internet-enabled. What does that mean for digital media?

9. Personalisation
Games are adapting to take on me as the player rather than the avatar the graphic artist came up with. That's personalisation. Not just letting my type my username in before I play.

10. Authenticity
People want to connect with things that are really real, not artificial as games have been for the last thirty years. Which leads to ideas like...

11. Geo-caching
Is playing Foursquare and taking twenty minutes to enter any building fun? Will it really become an engaging game?

12. Sharing
The 21s Century is built on sharing if the first ten years are anything to go by. Little Big Planet players have made over 2m levels. This collaborative process is leading to more

13. Cloud Gaming
Take a look at OnLive - but ask yourself how the servers will be paid for? Cloud computing reduces the cost of storage and servers to 'near zero' if you read Chris Anderson, but it's less 'near zero' if you're paying the bill.

14. Transmedia worlds
A world is not just a movie, or a game. It's a separate thing that can be entered in several ways. One of the most successful is Pokémon (cards, TV, toys, Wii, Nintendo, DVD...). In the music world we are seeing more 360 degree deals: the record label takes control of the Lady Gaga music, downloads, games, books, merchandise...

15. Speech recognition
Chris Swain notes that film only became the core of modern culture when they started to speak. It's when games start to listen that they become the core of our media experiences. When the method of control is above the neck, rather than below it, the medium will be elevated beyond the power of film, of any other medium for that matter. Schell imagines how this might change our morning drive from a routine of listening to the radio, to speaking to our games, taking games (safely) into new arenas and locations, with different groups of people.

16. Nooks and crannies
When so much gaming takes place in so little time that we actually devote to entertainment, the nooks and crannies elsewhere in our packed lives become the new places to play - eating, drinking, working (we've already got that with mobile games) and how about sleep?

17. Portable screens
Portable screens easily fall prey to the Hype Curve. From the peak of inflated expectations, to the trough of disillusionment to the slope of enlightenment and into the plateau of productivity. Take a look at the iPad - where does it stand today? The slope of enlightenment? It must be when people are paying £500 to find out what it does!

18. Quantitative Design
Bringing in more data from more real-time places becomes a fresh way to make games that change every second.

19. THE GAMEPOCALYPSE
This is not maybe all that bad, as the one thing that will not change amongst all these other changes is human psychology. If we can get our heads around that constant, then we can begin to understand the scope of change and potential before us:

Related articles by Zemanta

• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Games, Connect and Credits (insidesocialgames.com)
• OnLive Goes Live, Did You Sign Up? [PC] (kotaku.com)
• "LittleBigPlanet 2″: Play, Create and Share DIY Games [PREVIEW] (mashable.com)
• With Harry Potter release, OnLive shows it isn't just about old games (games.venturebeat.com)

Michel Thomas iPhone app, and a reason for learning 'cos' in maths

Michel Thomas iPhone app - petal math
Originally uploaded by BERG Studio

I admire pretty much everything the many Matts and others at Schooloscope a few weeks ago and, now, a suite of Michel Thomas language learning apps for iPhone.

What caught my eye in the behind-the-scenes making-of blog post was the graphic, opposite, showing how Matt (Brown) designed a "procedural petal", the captivating animated flower that flows in colour with Thomas' hypnotic voice. It's the first time since quitting maths class aged 16 that I've seen how and why you'd use cos.

I was forever that annoying kid who'd always ask Mr Cooper [swap for your own maths teacher's name] "why do we have to learn this?". Rarely did I get an answer beyond, "you might need it one day", and Mr Cooper hadn't picked up on his colleague Mr Walker's fascinating with programming BBC computers and early Macintoshes. Had I known that understanding cos could've helped me get a job with BERG building iPhone apps for Michel Thomas then I'd have stuck it out to the bitter end.

Alas, I didn't, and instead became a teacher of French and German, which means I can but admire and now attempt Spanish with BERG's beautifully produced homage to Michel.

If you want to learn language fast before heading off this summer holiday, then I reckon the boys' app is a great place to start - see the sample video below.



Notwithstanding this, please do check out my good friend Mark Pentleton's award-winning, iTunes-chart-busting Coffee Break language series. It's ace, fast for learning, too. It's just missing procedural petals.