Design Thinking Archives - Page 4 of 4

Feb 20 2016

Can design thinking work when you don’t have devices?

By John Spencer Design Thinking 3 Comments

A teacher emailed me earlier this week asking a question about design thinking. "I don't have much technology in my classroom but I want to have a maker space and I want to try design thinking. Any ideas?" My first thought is that some of…

Feb 17 2016

Who Gets to Choose the Audience?

By John Spencer Design Thinking One Comment

When I first shared the LAUNCH Cycle publicly, my friend George Couros offered some gentle pushback. He questioned whether or not it was necessary to wait until the end of the design thinking cycle to share with the world. So, it leaves me with this lingering…

Feb 15 2016

Curious About Design Thinking? Here’s a Framework You Can Use in Any Classroom with Any Age Group

By John Spencer Creativity, Design Thinking 6 Comments

The term "design thinking" is often attached to maker spaces and STEM labs. However, design thinking is bigger than STEM. It begins with the premise of tapping into student curiosity and allowing them to create, test and re-create until they eventually ship what they…

Jan 28 2016

What Two Cooking Shows Taught Me About Design Thinking

By John Spencer Creativity, Design Thinking No Comments

I love geeking out on the creative process. I love seeing the connections I experience in teaching, in writing, in developing web platforms, and in making sketchy videos. However, I also enjoy thinking through creativity in a context that's foreign to me. See, I'm not…

Oct 10 2015

Why Creative Types Hate Selling (And Why This Matters for Teachers)

By John Spencer Creativity, Design Thinking No Comments

Initially, I cringed at the term marketing. I viewed myself as an artist who thought that my work would be discovered. I viewed marketing as trickery. However, over time, I realized that if the initial goal of the design thinking cycle involved solving a problem…

Jul 01 2015

Nine Ways to Help Students Embrace the Revision Process

By John Spencer Design Thinking 2 Comments

I have noticed that students often hate the revision phase. In the design thinking cycle, they go from research to ideation and building a prototype. It seems cool. They're excited about what they made. But then when we switch to testing and revising, they get…

May 07 2015

You Get Four Items and Forty-Five Minutes. What Will You Make?

By John Spencer Design Thinking One Comment

It all began the year I taught sixth grade ELL. I had the same group of students all day in a class that, by law, had to be hyper-structured (we had a four-hour block of reading, writing, oral language, and grammar). On Tuesday, we didn't…