#MustRead Shares (weekly)

  • tags: productivity #MustRead mindfulness

  • tags: idiploma MVIFI Student Voice AP #MustRead #mvifishares School Change

  • tags: nais Maker #MustRead #mvifishares STEM STEAM

  • tags: serendipity innovation creativity iDiplomaSeminar reading list #MustRead #fsbl observationjournals

    • A surprising number of the conveniences of modern life were invented when someone stumbled upon a discovery or capitalized on an accident: the microwave oven, safety glass, smoke detectors, artificial sweeteners, X-ray imaging. Many blockbuster drugs of the 20th century emerged because a lab worker picked up on the “wrong” information.
    • While researching breakthroughs like these, I began to wonder whether we can train ourselves to become more serendipitous. How do we cultivate the art of finding what we’re not seeking?
    • “As their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.” And he proposed a new word — “serendipity” — to describe this princely talent for detective work. At its birth, serendipity meant a skill rather than a random stroke of good fortune.
    • serendipity as something people do.
    • “non-encounterers”; they saw through a tight focus, a kind of chink hole, and they tended to stick to their to-do lists when searching for information rather than wandering off into the margins.
    • “occasional encounterers,” who stumbled into moments of serendipity now and then.
    • Most interesting were the “super-encounterers,” who reported that happy surprises popped up wherever they looked.
    • You become a super-encounterer, according to Dr. Erdelez, in part because you believe that you are one — it helps to assume that you possess special powers of perception, like an invisible set of antennas, that will lead you to clues.
    • In the 1960s, Gay Talese, then a young reporter, declared that “New York is a city of things unnoticed” and delegated himself to be the one who noticed.
    • discoveries are products of the human mind.
    • As people dredge the unknown, they are engaging in a highly creative act.
    • What an inventor “finds” is always an expression of him- or herself.
    • Some scientists even embrace a kind of “free jazz” method, he said, improvising as they go along: “I’ve heard of people getting good results after accidentally dropping their experimental preparations on the floor, picking them up, and working on them nonetheless,” he added.
    • an incredible 50 percent of patents resulted from what could be described as a serendipitous process.
    • capable of seeing “patterns that others don’t see.”
    • That’s why we need to develop a new, interdisciplinary field — call it serendipity studies — that can help us create a taxonomy of discoveries
    • A number of pioneering scholars have already begun this work, but they seem to be doing so in their own silos and without much cross-talk.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

  • tags: impact #MustRead PBL design thinking

  • Sometimes the impetus for making is a practical problem. Other times, play, curiosity and imagination are the motivators. Regardless, researchers from Harvard’s Project Zero agree, “maker experiences help students learn to pursue their own passions and become self-directed learners, proactively seeking out knowledge and resources on their own” (Agency by Design, p. 3).

    HT Parker Thomas
    @JimTiffinJr @boadams1 @TJEdwards62 @craigyen thought you might enjoy reading this about teacher pd. https://t.co/B3Belz7pvP

    tags: Maker makered makereducation agency #MustRead badging resources

    • The nature of maker-based learning actively engages students, nurtures their agency, improves efficacy, and develops a creator or producer identity instead of a (passive) consumer one.
    • In Thomas’ experience, too many people fail to reflect on WHY they’re choosing certain tools, and HOW those tools will be integrated into the curriculum and culture of school.
  • So the question becomes: how do we get better at using design to create impact?

    An answer that has been gaining traction is education.

    tags: design design for social impact design thinking impact #MustRead higher ed degrees

    • Impact Design Hub spoke with Sara Cornish and Josh Treuhaft, two graduates from the inaugural class of the School of Visual Arts’ Design for Social Innovation (DSI) program, a two-year, cross-disciplinary MFA program, which aims to teach students to address social challenges through systems-level design thinking and offers one of the first graduate degrees in this field.
    • Yeah, and I think there was an understanding that we were not only joining the program, but also helping to build it, which was really exciting. I remember that the interviews were so filled with anticipation. They told us, “This is going to be amazing. You’re going to be part of something that’s an absolute first. You’re going to help trailblaze the field.”
    • it was never explicitly about learning the way to design for social innovation. It was more about teaching a variety of different thought models, processes, and tools that you can use for various types of work relating to social impact. Ultimately, the program is about systems thinking and how things are connected to each other.
    • Framing and strategizing and mapping is great, but at the end of the day, actually putting things in the world and seeing what they do is really important.
    • If you treat your thesis and your projects as real opportunities that could lead to some sort of impact or change and take it all seriously, you’d be amazed at what you can accomplish.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.