LAUNCH Cycle Archives - John Spencer

Nov 20 2020

What happens when students launch their work to an audience?

By John Spencer Design Thinking 3 Comments

Right now, I'm feeling the effects of social isolation. My social circle is essentially my wife and my kids. I'm only going out when necessary to go to the grocery store. This Thanksgiving will be the first in years that I don't see friends or…

Apr 28 2019

The Power of a Launch (Why Students Should Share Their Work)

By John Spencer Design Thinking, Podcast One Comment

This article is part of a larger series on design thinking. Students begin with Look, Listen, and Learn, which is all about awareness and empathy. They move into Ask Tons of Questions, an inquiry phase. This leads to research in the Understanding the Process or…

Apr 17 2019

Moving from Recipes to Projects

By John Spencer Creativity, Design Thinking 3 Comments

This article is part of a longer series on design thinking, a flexible framework for empathy-driven creative work. You might want to check out other articles in the series first. Students begin with a state of awareness in the Look, Listen, and Learn phase. Next, they move…

Apr 27 2017

Over 60,000 students from 12 countries are ready for the Global Day of Design #GDD17

By John Spencer Creativity, Design Thinking 2 Comments

Last year over 40,000 students and 450 schools from 5 continents participated in the very first Global Day of Design. The hashtag went viral as students and teachers shared and launched their creative projects all day long around the globe. This year, we are doing…

Jun 27 2016

Brainstorming Is Broken. Here’s How You Can Fix It.

By John Spencer Creativity, Creativity Deconstructed 4 Comments

Brainstorming Is Broken Brainstorming can be fun. You get together and generate a massive list of ideas. Everyone is shouting all over each other. It’s exciting. It's passionate. But what if it's not all it's cracked up to be? That's a key argument in "Why…

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…

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…