Ultra Boy

I loaned my friend, Ben, that book, A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink.

I previously blogged about the book as one of the books I've taken along on my design journey (here).  Pink describes that we need more creative, holistic thinkers, (like my friend Ben), and talks about the kinds of skills right brainers have such as symphony (bringing disparate elements together) and story (putting together facts into a cohesive, contextual narrative).  I do think it is time for the Right Brainers to take over. The left brainers can only take us so far and seem to do it without conscience.


Ben was talking to his wife, and they wondered if I am right brained or left brained, and couldn't figure which one I was.  I understand their confusion.  I am different things at different times. 

I used to read comics as a kid. I liked the Teen Titans because it was this legion of young superheroes. Superboy (young Superman) was a member, but things seemed too easy because he had all these great powers all of the time. How could he possible fail?  There was not tension or interest in that situation. 

There was this other teen, Ultra Boy. He was like Superboy, but he could only use one of his super powers at a time, (e.g. he couldn't fly and be invulnerable or be strong at the same time). He had to consciously decide which of his powers worked best in each situation. 

I feel like that kid. I have a bunch of talents. I say that with all humility because the problem is I can't use them all of the time, plus the talents are not super strong individually (e.g. super smell, super funny, super sensitive, etc.), plus I have no control over which one I get to use, plus sometimes they just don't work.  For example, I have an exact memory of what a co-worker was wearing the first day we worked together 20 years ago. How useful is that?  Another time, I could tell who was getting on the elevator four floors below because of their perfume. (Supersmell is not a great ability to have in an elevator).

So if I had to label myself,  I guess I am involuntarily multi-brained. My principal once did these profiles on us which were plotted on this circle, and my two dominant styles were on opposite ends of the wheel which doesn't happen much. It's a constant struggle with me. I like to be creative, but my analytical side doesn't see the use in it. I see the big picture, but get mired in details. I like people, but not crowds.  I guess that's why I like blogging.  I can use my creativity when the ability and inspiration present themselves to me which is a schedule I can't predict. 

In terms of the classroom, students are like many versions of Ultra Boy.  They have all of these talents but have to make a conscious decision to use them.  The problem is that they have NO idea of what those talents are.  My job is to help bring those talents out for them to recognize so they can use them (for good, not evil).  The best way I know to do this is to present them with a variety of experiences so they can show their best selves.  The classroom environment plays a key role in that.  If I just give them the same routines everyday, they may never get to see their hidden talents.  Some of my kids are great at sitting in a desk and doing what they are told.  A whole bunch of my kids are not, and the variety of my classroom environment helps them explore the circumstances where they have talents and how they should use them.  Just like Ultra Boy.



p.s Ben sent me this link about stand up desks.  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/us/25desks.htmlEnjoy
and my wife and my friend Lisa coincidentally sent me the same link of a blogpost on classroom design
http://teachwellnow.blogspot.com/2012/01/classroom-design.html

The Stockholm Syndrome: the Perfect School Design?

My friend H sent me this article about the "school of the future" in Stockholm.
http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/37250/vittra/


Our future? I actually hope not. It is a beautiful design to look at, but anytime we have a huge open space, it reminds me of the open areas of the 70s. Sure the 70s had great designs: big bell-bottom pants, the AMC Pacer, and mutton-chop side burns.  And this school may be great in theory, but difficult in practice. Perhaps our way of teaching had evolved to make it work better, but just the noise level alone would drive me bonkers.
Imagine a kindergarten room during centres. Now multiply the students and space to accommodate an entire school. Now increase the ceiling height and remove anything soft (like walls and furniture) to harness the sound. This is how I imagine the Stockholm school to be (which reminds me of the library in the newest school in my district).
Yeah, Stockholm isn't Canada. Sure we have a lot in common: cold weather, great looking people, and Ikeas all over the place; but looking at this design suggests we have different needs.  Those cold Swedes. Not like the huggable Canadians.


I didn't realize how choosy I've become in my design.  Though I have misgivings about the Stockholm school, it does have a lot of merits: spaces for congregating and working together, sleek design elements, a non-traditional look, and kid-friendly fixtures. 
 
And it gets me thinking what my own idea of a perfect school would be.  Off the top of my head, one element I would like would be wall sections that slide on tracks.  It would be like the Japanese idea in terms of flexibility (yes, the F word) so that we could transform spaces depending on need.  I would NOT make them out of paper.  It seems so weird to have walls that are paper thin (and made of carbs?) because I'd want less noise transfer.   
 
 
I still like the idea of the campfire, the watering hole, and the cave.  People need a "campfire" area to gather in large groups.  Think: theatre or hall.  We need a forum for our whole community to meet.  They also need a "watering hole" to gather in partners or small groups.  Think how people gather around the watercooler, coffee machine, buffet table or even a non-food area.  Think of how many great ideas that have sprung up in such informal networking places.  The "cave" is extremely important.  Sometimes, creative people especially, need to hole up and seclude themselves from others, free from outside distractions.  Think of how kids will sit under their desks and tables to get away from others when they need to get something done.  Students are always burrowing under the risers or behind rolling shelves in my class.  I get that, and I am looking for more ways to accommodate them. (I think this is why iPods are so popular.  We create an artificial force field of sound that separates us from people on the bus, the noise of the street, our parents, etc.).

Hmmm.  I've gone from classroom design to school design.  Isn't one revolution enough?

You Can't "Focus Group" Innovation

I'm not sure what I'm having more fun doing, going on my little design journey or exploring other people's innovations.  It is funny how my own path lead me to other people's great ideas.  I've posted before about some patterns I've witnessed in innovation (the playfulness, the slight subversive quality of going against the grain, the happy accidents, etc.).

The one I want to focus on here is the one referred to in the title.  You can't focus group for innovation.  Sure it is good to have a big group of minds to spur on some new ideas, but most times people will regress to the mean.  They will revert to what is known and comfortable.  The thing about true innovation is that sometimes the idea really comes from left field.  When you think about great innovations, they give us things that we didn't know we needed until we had them.  If you told me 30 years ago that I could keep my entire record collection in my pocket, I would have asked you, "Why on Earth would I want to do that?"  (And that was the 80s when I was wearing those weird parachute pants, and I probably could have kept my collection in my pants).  I didn't even like cassettes back then, so keeping my music on an iPod was far, far beyond the scope of my understanding.  (Now the flying car, that's a different story.) 
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from http://thediscoverystores.com/store/images/ipod-touch-4th.jpg



http://www.alivemag.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Alive-Blog-1980s-parachute-pants.png

When I mention some of the innovations I am seeing around the district, people ask, "But what does the research say about it?"  That question always confuses me.  If the idea is new or ground breaking, then conceivably there should be no research on it.  Study on innovation can only happen retroactively, unfortunately. 

And usually those innovations only occurred because a series of random acts just happened to happen.  I believe in evolution.  Why? Because of cake.  Not monkeys.  Cake.  Each time I bite into a piece of cake, I think to myself, how did someone invent this?  How did it go from a bit of wheat that goes back centuries to this two layered, chocolate ganache bit of heaven?  After a hard day of working on the wheel, some caveman happened to chew on some grain and thought, "Hmm, maybe if I take the outside off, it will taste better."  It did.  Then some other caveman ran it through that other invention, fire.  Along the way, someone decided to grind it to a powder.  Someone else decided to add something to sweeten it.  Someone (a really brave someone) decided to mix that stuff with this thing that shot out of the back end of a chicken.  And so on.

This is what I am thinking about when I eat cake.  The evolution of things.  We look back on the things we have today and it all seems so obvious: these things would have all been invented sooner or later.  I am not so sure.  There seems to be a certain randomness that has to click in order for things to happen, and they usually happen in unexpected ways.

That's why I think we can't focus group innovation.  We can't foresee the random events that have to click to make things happen.  Focus groups are usually comprised of a committee of average people which is why you get average(d) results.  However, if you want to increase your chances and create innovation in a group, put together these kinds of groups:

• wacky thinkers because they will stretch the boundaries.
• people who tick us off.  They push us and irritate us out of complacency.  Or at least we will come up with ideas as fast as we can so we, the ticked, can get away from them, the tickers.
• connectors.  They take ideas from unexpected other domains and put them to use for our purposes.  
• kindergarten kids.  They have all the above groups.

All of these groups seem to operate better with cookies.  Or maybe cake.

from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJTd3DYiM875Pe7qjs47QvckSsHTZ_ObKQZ6yh9a9NITiA8AmoyQiBfz4vIQxtYNRg8TJkItqzxr2T7Y-W7vyfzlu1xs3FqxnYpuzeGYSEFsuzVTWP9Y7XssZ68m3SHTKc4CR2/s374/cake+-chocolate_cake_recipe.jpg

Classroom Design Challenge 3: The Science Room

In this post, I talk about a room that has really stymied me: a science room.

First, let me talk about the space.  R has a science room in a 25 year-old school.  She teaches middle school science, but the school used to be a junior high so the room is equipped with things you'd find in a high school science lab (that go almost unused in a middle school classroom): a fume hood, big counters and cupboards that line almost every wall, and the sinks.  Let me tell you about the sinks.  They are the biggest pain if you don't use them on a daily basis.  Because it used to be a science room, there are 6-8 sink/plug/gas (yes: GAS but disconnected) stations spaced just under every two metres about the floor.    Because the high sink stations take up so much floor space and are spaced out around the room, it makes for very limited choices in terms of desk/furniture arrangement because you can't go very far without bumping in to one of these archaic monuments.  And that's just one of the challenges of many that the sinks present (others: visibility; an abundance of water and available electricity; aesthetics; the students get snagged on the protruding gas taps; etc.). 

 

 
Second, let me tell you about R.  As per my usual Modus Operandi, I observed her in her room.  R teaches math and science in this room.  Like E in the previous post, she uses technology (a Mac with an interactive interface and a projector) in her lessons.  Like E, R also likes to have direct eye contact with her students. Part of R's problem though is that the room forces her to space her students out so that some of her students sit way in the back.  One really clever technique that R uses for math is: during the formative/working together part of her lesson, she will give a problem and the students use individual whiteboards to try out possible solutions.  The students love the whiteboards because they have a clear place to work, and because their work is erasable, the students seem willing to take a few more chances and are not as worried about making mistakes.  After a given amount of time, the students hold up their boards and at a glance, R can see who needs more support and if she needs to adjust her instruction. 
Here are some suggestions for R:

• Get rid of the sink stations.  Easy to recommend, not so easy to execute.  R has requested that the sink stations be removed for years, but she is still waiting.
• Put R on a stage.  Elevate the teaching area at the front by her whiteboard.  This way, R will have a better view of her students, especially those in the back, and vice versa.  She could increase her whiteboard area too by putting two together, stacked like tiles on her teaching wall.  I also recommended getting one of those mic/amp systems so she could be heard easier (the room, with the tile floors, high ceiling, and hard walls, is one noisy space), but it is an expensive suggestion.
• Clear out a space at the front of her classroom during instruction times.  Have the students bring their chairs and whiteboards to the front during instructional times so that she has immediate contact with her students, and them send them to the "work areas" at the back and sides if they can work independently.
• Bring desks back in.  I know, an unusual suggestion coming from me, but it might be the most practical.  R and I were able to rearrange her large tables a bit so she had more students sitting at the front and less students in the far back, to improve the student contact, but even that was challenging with the sink stations blocking the way.  Smaller desks might give R more choices about how to arrange students in the "in-between" tight spaces between those pesky sinks.
• Make your own furniture.  I think I recommended to R that she attach plywood to the tops of her existing tables to make longer, more dimension-friendly tables. 

If you have any ideas, please pass them along!  (My Comments boxes seem to have technical difficulties, so please use Anonymous commenting or email me.  Thanks.)

Classroom Design Challenge 2: The Portable.

In my Tuesday Innovation job, I get to go around to a bunch of interesting classrooms.  Sometime teachers ask me to come in to their classrooms to help them with the classroom environment because they have heard about what I've been doing in my own class or they have seen this blog. 

In the next few posts, I am going to talk about a couple of classroom challenges that I have found, well, challenging.  In this post, the classroom belongs to E.  E teaches high school math in a portable classroom built 25 years ago.  It has that long beam running down the middle length of the ceiling, and a large seam running likewise down the floor. 

Inside, the portable has a long bank of shelves down one whole wall under the 3 windows.  Her biggest class has 30 students which means that there are 30 large desks in her class.  The desks are bigger than the ones I am used to in elementary, and hers measure 60 cm by 60 cm.  The desks are a bit of a necessity because: they came with the portable; there is no place to store the desks even if she wanted to get rid of them; the desks actually are useful in that they can hold the students' notebooks and textbooks at the same time; and no tables are available anyway.

Before I made any suggestions to E, I went in and watched her teach in her current setting.  She is a great teacher. She has every lesson stored on her tablet computer (I can't imagine how long that took!), and she displays the lessons on a screen using a projector.  Her lessons are very interactive: she gives examples, and gets students to try them out, sharing their possible solutions.  The whole time, she is talking to the students, asking questions, and giving feedback and assistance.  She seems to have eyes in the back of her head because she can detect movement and off-task behaviour without even looking at the wayward student. 

Here are a couple of things I noticed about E and her classroom:

• E likes eye contact (despite having eyes in addition to ones on the face portion of her head).  She can tell when students need more help or more challenge just by looking at them.  By taking the temperature of the room, she knows how to adjust the lesson as a whole.
• E likes to move.  She moves around her students in a graceful flow instead of sitting in one spot and waiting for students to come to her. 
• E uses technology to make her lessons more effective.  She uses her tablet and projector the same way any skilled artisan does: it is used like an instrument, a tool, a natural extension of her craft. 

Here are some recommendations.  (Some of them I passed on to E, and some I did not.)

• Don't do anything about the desks.  They allow enough surface area for what the students need.  By having them in horizontal groupings of 2 or 3 facing the front, it allows the amount of student to student interaction that E needs when students are working on problems together.  Tables actually might not give the eye contact that E requires to monitor her students' understanding.
• Free up floor space to allow E unimpeded movement.  The desks take up almost all of the room so anything else that is not necessary should be removed.  E brought in this screen from home because the provided one wasn't big enough.  But her screen also takes up a lot of space because it has that big tripod base.  If there is anyway to get a big wall mounted screen, that would free up more floor space.
• Move the projector to the back of the classroom off the floor.  Currently the projector is on a rolling cart.  It takes up prime real estate because it is in the centre of the classroom.  By getting the projector up high and at the back of the class would allow this centre lane to be used by desks or even E herself.  By using hooks along the ceiling, the wires would also be out of the way (one thing I don't like about media carts). 
• Put the tablet on a podium.  E doesn't really stand and lecture, but a podium would still be useful because I noticed that every time she wrote on her tablet she had to bend down to this low table.  If the tablet was on a high podium she would not have to do all of these core exercises, and she would maintain more eye contact with her students.  If the podium had shelves she could keep all of the papers and books she needs for the day there, instead of having to use a big table that cut into her floor space.
• Unscrew the long bank of wall mounted shelves, and rejig them into a set of raised platforms (yeah, you know me and my risers). By reinforcing these shelves and laying a sheet of of plywood over them, E could raise the back row of desks so that she could maintain eye contact with even the lurkers in the back. If she ever left the portable, she could just screw the shelves back to the wall.
  
  

  

  Here's a potential floor plan I made for E. 
  I'd actually angle those side desks for more eye contact,
  remove the shelves and raise the back desks.



Here's the (elaborate) sketch I sent E to explain how the podium, projector, screen, and wire set up would work.
Mind you, see how having to bend to low table has done wonders for her waistline in my pic?

As it turns out, E found the most elegant situation to this design challenge: her admin told her she could change classrooms!  E let me know her future move and maybe we'll work on this less challenging project together.