10 Games To Foster Innovation on Your Team

I believe that projects should be fun.   When projects are fun, people share their best and most innovative ideas.   I am very thankful that my team leader introduced me to the book Gamestorming, a playbook for innovators, rule-breakers and changemakers.     As an agile coach for a software development team, it’s important for our team to learn how to collaborate, support our customers on making judgments about priority and requirements, and to keep improving the product and the team.   As I have started to learn more about project based learning, I realized that the ideas from Gamestorming may be helpful to teachers and education leaders.    As teachers, how do we really engage students in the work of their projects?   As education leaders, how do we encourage innovative teaching that creates life long learners and encourages students to be creative?   If we want creativity to be a part of our education system, we have to practice this art.    Why don’t we practice this craft of creativity through games?

For a brief introduction to GameStorming by David Gray, check out the following video:

Here are 10 games that I have used with my teams.    For project based learning fans, I hope you can imagine yourself using these ideas to inspire the creative skills of your students.   For leaders, I hope these games help inspire a spirit of innovation with your teams.

 

10 Easy Innovation Games

  1. Trading cards – In a learning and innovation environment, it’s important for your players to build rapport with each other.   This is a pretty easy ice breaker game.
  2. Post-up – I really love this device since it helps EVERYONE to contribute. (whether you’re a very vocal person or a quiet thinker)    Post it notes are a simple way of capturing an idea.   This game gives the team silence and space to reflect upon creating new ideas.   Other games can be used to organize those ideas.
  3. Affinity map – In “Post-up”, the primary goal was to capture ideas.  Affinity map encourages your team organize your ideas on a white board or table.  If one idea is very similar to another idea, those ideas should be placed in closer proximity.     This helps you see relationships between ideas.
  4. Mitch Lacey Team Prioritization – For any project team, it’s often useful to consider the question “what should we do that will generate the most value with the smallest amount of complexity?”   This game encourages your project team to arrange ideas on a 2d space.  On one axis, you have complexity.( low to high)   One the other axis, you have value(low value to high value)   By placing ideas on this grid, it’s often easy for your team to spot the next logical steps.
  5. Dot voting – What does your team think we should do?  In this simple game, your team receives 5 dots.   The team places their dot votes next to ideas that they would support.  Voting can also encourage friendly competition.
  6. $100 Test – If we had $100 to spend on the ideas before the team, how would we allocate that money?
  7. Atomize – As we study complex systems, it’s often helpful to decompose large ideas or objects into smaller parts.   For example, as we study cells in biology, this game can be used to help students learn the components of the cell.    If your team is creating something new, this game can help you think about how to break the problem into parts.
  8. 4C’s – As your project team considers creating a new product or service, this game helps your team think about decomposing the problem.
  9. Plus/Delta – This simple game helps the team reflect upon what went really well and what we can improve.   Team reflection and team sponsored improvement can be very powerful.
  10. Actions for retrospectives – This retrospective game is very similar to #9.   In some ways, I like this game more since the team also considers the questions of risk and wishes.    The game also encourages you to make ideas actionable.

I have listed a few of the games we use with my teams, you can find many more at the Gamestorming Wiki : http://www.gogamestorm.com/?page_id=234

 

 

 

 

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/8501790@N04/6078625028/in/photostream/

Reflecting On Sandy Hook

As a teacher and a parent of a pre-kindergarden student, the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday breaks my heart. I can’t keep myself from clicking on tribute pages on CNN.com and looking at those sweet innocent faces and reading the stories of the heroic teachers. Collectively, our country is asking a lot of questions today. Why? How can we stop something like this? Why? Who could do such a thing? Why? Where was God?… Why? I cannot answer any of these things, but I can ask myself why this tragedy hits me so hard.

The first reason is obvious, the magnitude of the death toll and the fact that most of the victims were children makes this event particularly heart wrenching. Added on top of that is that it occurred just a week and a half before Christmas, the very holiday in which we celebrate the Nativity of Christ and the innocence of children. Many of the victim’s profiles I’ve read talked about what the children wanted for Christmas this year. I think about our plans for the next week and how our older son is SO excited for Jesus’ birthday. I think about all of the joy that our boys bring to our lives and how motherhood has made me a better person. I just cannot fathom having that ripped away from me.

The second reason this tragedy has affected me so much is that it occurred in the classroom. This is a sacred space. As a parent, I entrust our children to the care of their teachers each day believing that the school is one of the safest places they can be. As a teacher I simply feel violated. My students are adults and, for the most part, can take care of themselves, but some things are the same in the college classroom as they were on that very first day of school. No matter the age of the student, if they do not feel safe they cannot learn. Every time a student walks into a classroom they open themselves up to knowledge and face their weaknesses. They are incredibly vulnerable inside that classroom. School should be a safe space where the worries of the world are left outside and students are free to learn. It should provide a pathway to success, and should not be a dead end.

We spend a lot of time on this blog talking about different teaching methods, new technologies and the daily struggles of education, things that seem trivial in light of the tragedy. Today I just want to thank God for my vocation. I truly love what I do and I know that the teachers that gave their lives as Sandy Hook did too. The best thing I can do to honor them is to be the best teacher that I can be and to not let this horrific event cloud my life with fear.

Why Use Virtual Worlds To Teach?

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/educationau/4291125291/sizes/m/in/photostream/

 

As I have been doing personal research on educational technology around chatbots, I became intrigued in how teachers use virtual worlds as a teaching tool.   This line of questioning led me to the following blog article from Vicki Davis and her students:

Web 3D: Students using OpenSim Reflect on the Pressing Issues that We all Ask about Using Virtual Worlds

In this blog article, Vicki and her students reflect upon how OpenSim is used as a teaching and learning environment.    It’s inspiring to me to see that the students have become teachers.   Very cool.

I have to confess that this blog post makes me want to return to 9th grade so I can take Vicki’s class.

Motivations to use virtual worlds to teach

  1. Students become teachers: The virtual world creates an environment where students can become the teacher.   I was impressed with the student reflections upon their work.   Vicki has created a situation where students need to teach other students about a subject.    The students used their OpenSim creations as teaching tools for other students.
  2. Students learn from making: The act of crafting simulated worlds creates teachable moments.   One student mentioned he was struggling with designing his objects for realism.   I find this kind of playful learning exciting.   As a maker, you always have a tension between the vision of what you want to create and implementing that vision in the tools or media you select.    I LOVE that students are practicing this craft.   The students felt they had a better grasp of working in 3D space(“x,y,z thinking”) through their construction of their virtual world.
  3. Students teach each other about digital citizenship:  Vicki Davis is teaching her students amazing lessons about digital citizenship.   Students are teaching each other about the importance of sharing your identity in a responsible manner.   (i.e. protecting your location, protecting your real name, etc.)    They are teaching each other lessons regarding responsible use of digital media.   They are constructing experiences that help students understand issues around copyrights.    They are also building awareness around “creative commons” work.
  4. Students are learning to collaborate with other students:  As a professional software creator and agile coach, I have learned that great software comes from great teams.    I love that Vicki through the Flat Classroom Movement is teaching students to collaborate with other students across the world.   To learn more, please visit the following link.   This is amazing.
  5. If you blog, you have to practice writing:  I believe it’s cool how Vicki encourages her students to use blogs to write about their journey and communicate.    Why?  In the process of blogging, the students can practice the craft of writing.

Here are a few more helpful links to learning about the work of Vicki Davis:

 

 

Related Posts

5 Reasons Why We Should Value Teaching Music

Michael's violin

We love the Christmas season since we’re a musical family. My wife and I help lead a small music ministry in our church. I enjoy playing violin, piano, guitar and leading young musicians. I love to make music with my wife who has a wonderful taste in music, has a great ear for balance and sings a mean “alto” line.
As Advent and Christmas approach, it’s difficult to not get excited about all the opportunities to make music together and celebrate our faith through music making. Through this anticipation, I started to reflect upon the role music has had in forming me as a father, leader, and computer science professional. I wanted to share a few insights from my personal reflection.

Motivations for teaching music

  • Students need to practice the craft of making: I believe our capacity to create is one of our greatest gifts in personhood. In the act of making music, students learn the craft of pure expression. True music goes beyond reading notes on a page, reproducing guitar licks or simply imitating a master musician. True music happens when the notes, the silence, the timing, and the dynamics appear in the right proportion. True music happens when the student says something with their music from their soul. The craft of making also teaches students courage. It takes a lot for a young composer to share their gift/song with an audience. It takes a lot to get over fear: What if they don’t like it!?
  • Discipline: I have to say that I hated practicing music as a kid. I have to confess my parents were very effective at holding me accountable for practicing. While I didn’t appreciate this at the time, I have to admit that the discipline of practicing music got transferred into my discipline for learning computer science and the many other areas of my life. I still need to practice more!
  • Integrated thought: From a perspective of biology, music helps students develop both halves of their brain. The creative part of your mind becomes engaged with your creative mind.
  • Listening: Bernard M. Baruch has a great quote: “Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.” Students of music have to learn the craft of listening. Why? In group music making, students learn to listen for their entrances. In a choir, singers learn to listen to the phrases from the other voices. This act of listening helps the choir make one unified sound and communicate a unified emotional experience.
  • Team work and cooperation: Through the act of music making in a group, students learn how to follow each other. In the case of band or orchestra, students learn to follow the leadership of a master. On a personal level, I learned my first lessons about leadership from music, not computer science. In college, I was asked by my pastor to take a leadership position as a choir director and worship leader. Building on my experiences of great music teachers and choir directors, I was able to make that transition from being a player of music to someone who can encourage others to share their talents.

Schools, like any organization, have limited resources. How do we ensure that young person has the opportunity to grow their character and personhood through music? How do we protect arts education so that our students value being innovative and creative?

Music Lessons Info Graphic

Why I still use textbooks

The last time I wrote a post I talked about why textbooks may become obsolete (see post here). Today I’d like to tell you why I still rely heavily upon them today. I teach two broad introductory courses, one is a general biology course for non-science majors and the other is a microbiology course for pre-health (i.e. nursing) majors. I require a textbook for both courses. Here’s why:

1) Reliable Content. While I know a lot about biology and microbiology, I am certainly not an expert on every topic. My textbooks serve as an anchor and a place to build from. For the topics I know a lot about, I can add to what the textbook offers. For those that I know very little about, I can rely on the textbook to provide a solid foundation in the topic. I panicked a little my first semester when I discovered I was going to be to teaching evolution. Not my strongest subject (lots of higher math and complicated ecology, fortunately I just have to cover the basics). Yes the internet has a wide variety of resources, but I can trust the information put forth in my textbook. It has been peer reviewed and carefully edited. I can’t say the same for Wikipedia or any other website (especially when it comes to a controversial topic such as evolution).

2) Structure. When teaching a broad introductory course, how do you know where to start? How deep should you get into the material? Which topics are central to understanding the subject and which ones are less important? Good textbooks provide a nice ready made framework to build your course. They break topics up into manageable chunks and put them into a logical sequence. Students respond well to order and organization. By using a textbook you give them a resource to turn to when they are confused or lost. I like to think of a course as a journey through the subject material. The professor is the leader on the journey and the textbook serves as a map. Of course, a professor that is very familiar with the lay of the land might take back roads or alternate routes, but a textbook can help the straggling student find their way back to the group.

3) Publisher Resources. Publishers have realized that they cannot just be in the business of publishing a paper textbook and expect that to remain profitable. For instructors, they provide visual aids, animations, pre-packaged PowerPoint slides, active lecture activities, etc. to accompany their textbooks. They also have built subscription based websites for homework assignments. These things are invaluable to a new instructor like myself. Do I build my own material? Of course I do. Are there other resources out there on the web? Yep. Again, these publisher provided resources give me a starting place and simplify the process of building a course. To be honest, as I get more comfortable teaching I foresee myself moving away from using these resources as much, but for now they are incredibly convenient.

Not all textbooks are created equal. Some are better than others and some are just downright awful. But the right textbook can be a great launching point for a course.

 

Undergraduate students and technology(infographic)

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Teaching like a game designer

playing monopoly

All teachers and leaders seek new ways to engage their students and followers.   Games have a profound potential as teaching tools.   I wanted to share some of the key questions that have helped me in my quest to become a game designer.   (I still have much to learn)  The questions serve as a checklist for designing and evaluating game designs.  I hope that they can serve teachers, leaders and innovators who seek to create teachable moments through their own game designs.   Please keep in mind that you don’t need to be a programmer or technology expert to design games.  Play is a natural part of being human.   Some of the best games are played with no technology.   YOU can design your own teaching games.

I want to give a “shout out” to Dr. Jane McGonigal for teaching these core questions in her book “Reality is broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.”    I would also invite you to review her TED talk.

1) What is the goal of the game?   As educators, we want our activities to be aligned with teaching objectives.  For instance, we may want our students to learn geography.   While this is a fine objective, many high impact games wrap the objective in mystery and story.   “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?”, the legendary game that helped to launch game based learning, challenged students to join a quest to find the infamous criminal, Carmen Sandiego, and bring her to justice.   Players of this game learned aspects of geography on accident. (or by design!?)

It’s true that many games do not have a profound story(i.e. chess, checkers, spades,etc.), but designers of games should make the goal of the game clear.

2) What are the rules of the game? Think about your favorite game.   How would you describe how to play your favorite game to a friend?  As we answer this question, we probably need to address the following concerns:
– Players
– Objectives(s)
– Procedures of the game
– Resources
– Conflict
– Boundaries
– Space

3) Why would someone volunteer for the work of your game?  We all love Angry birds.  What are the qualities of this game that encourage us to throw small little birds against buildings, bricks, and strangely colored little pigs?  As we use games to design educational experience, are we appealing to our desire for fun?   Are we designing our game to appeal to our need to be social and collaborate?   Are we appealing to our players desire to serve a high or epic purpose?  Are we appealing to players who like to compete against each other?

4) How does the player receive feedback?  As we design our learning experiences, players need a way to know that we are winning.  Do the players receive points or badges?  Do the players receive praise for doing a good job?

 
Gameful educational experiences have a unique opportunity to make failure fun.   We can design the player experience to keep the player coming back for more.   In some teaching environments, failure is discouraged.   In a gaming environment, we find fun ways to bring our students back into the game, provide meaningful feedback, provide corrective instruction,  and help them master the skill or topic at hand.

For fans of project based learning, consider visiting http://www.gogamestorm.com/ .   What game could you use to help your class to brainstorm project ideas?

 

 

 

 

 

Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/upturnedface/6661061039/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Behind the scenes with NASA: Conversations with Sally Ride, Mars rover drivers, and more…

Mars rover

As a kid, I loved the nights that my Dad would pull out our old school slide projector.  (very old school)  As a family, we would watch these NASA astronomy shows.  These simple slide shows would always blow my mind.   The universe is just BIG.  VERY BIG!  These childhood activities combined with unhealthy doses of watching Star Trek helped me become a NASA geek.   It’s awesome that I got to marry a fellow NASA lover.

As a professional developer in my adult life, I draw inspiration from hearing the “behind the scenes” stories of the men and women who have pushed humanity to their limits.   In some cases, these men and women gave their lives to help humanity push the limits of science and extend our research of space.    For our post today, I wanted to take our readers on a back stage tour of some really incredible scientists and engineers from NASA.   I hope these stories help inspire all of us to never stop learning and to always “dare mighty things.”

 

Sally Ride on Breaking Ground in Aerospace and Education

Podcast comes to us from Harvard Business Review IdeaCast.    Sally Ride, former NASA astronaut and founder of Sally Ride Science.  In this interview, the late Sally Ride shares her experiences as a mentor and ideas for improving STEM education.   She is still a hero to many in the science and education community.

Podcast link

 

It IS Rocket Science?

Holly Griffith, former Space Shuttle and current Space Station worker bee
Scott talks to Holly Griffith, former Space Shuttle Flight Controller and now International Space Station worker bee. Holly is an engineer who has worked in and around space and aerospace for her entire career. Holly and Scott talk space, engineering, fuel cells and Scott tries to keep up.

Podcast link

 

The Mars Rover Drivers

This story comes to use from FLOSS Weekly.   Randal and Aaron talk with Scott Maxwell and Paolo Bellutta about driving the Mars rovers.

Podcast link

ROBOTS ON MARS WITH MARK POWELL

Scott talks to Mark Powell, Senior Software Engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Mark has worked on three Mars lander missions, most recently supporting Curiosity. Mark lives on Mars Time. What’s it like to write software that helps us talk to robots on that are on FREAKING MARS?

Podcast link

 

Carl and Richard are Back in Space!
Carl and Richard are back in space! With the SpaceX launch to the International Space Station, the boys decide they have to talk about space again. A big chunk of the conversation focuses on how a billionaire boys club has grown up around space – folks like Elon Musk who made their money in technology are now spending it to expand mankind’s reach into space, and perhaps make a buck or two along the way. Beyond SpaceX there is Planetary Resources, a gathering of a bunch of internet billionaries to mine asteroids. Is this how mankind will expand into space?

Podcast link

 

7 Minutes of Terror

NASA’s Curiosity rover is a 1-ton robot that will make an unprecedented Mars landing on Aug. 5, 2012. See how the risky maneuver will keep rover team members in suspense for 7 fateful minutes. Credit: NASA

 

So… What do you think the “big news” will be from Mars?    How will this news impact us?

 

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