Inside Innovation A.J. Juliani

While John Spencer and I were developing the LAUNCH Cycle, we came up with a few areas that were likely stumbling blocks in the creative (design-thinking inspired) process. One of the keys to the Launch Cycle is taking the time to Look, Listen, and Learn throughout the entire process (that is the L in the LAUNCH acronym).
In talking with George Couros about the Launch Cycle we had a good conversation about when it was appropriate to share that learning. The quick answer: all the time. From start to finish you can be learning and sharing during the process. Whether it is students doing a Genius Hour Project, teachers creating their own PD, or school leaders implementing an initiative--the key is to be transparent with that learning process.

Here's the problem: To be transparent and share your learning means to open yourself up to public failures.
This is true for all of us. It is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the creative process. And it's not the failing. It's the resiliency to get back up and keep trying. It's the tenacity to continue attacking the problem and developing solutions. It's the feeling that your work is not complete until you've made some sort of progress.
And I know what you are saying in your head right now, because I'm saying the same thing: It's one thing to fail and bounce back myself or in a small group. It's a completely different level to fail in front of what seems like the whole world and try to keep going in the creative process!
But, if we want to be great. If we want our students to be great. If we want our schools to be great. Failure, and sharing that failure, has to be a part of the process. It cannot be hidden. It cannot be swept under the rug. It cannot be forgotten.
I'm right there with you. I need to learn how to fail better, and bounce back stronger, and not be afraid to share it with the world. For me, it gets me inspired to hear and see others sharing epic failures with an audience. Enter my inspiration: Elon Musk.

Learning How to Fail From Elon Musk One of the best lessons on sharing the entire Launch Cycle is happening right now. We are living in an amazing time, where every step of SpaceX's program is being broadcasted, shared, and discussed in real-time. If you aren't sure what I'm talking about, here's the general gist (or you can read this 30,000-word article on it that I loved).
Elon Musk was a co-founder of PayPal where he made millions of dollars when the company sold to eBay. Instead of buying yachts and living off his riches, Musk decided on tackling three of the biggest problems he could think of: Dependence on fossil fuels, space travel, and solar energy. He formed three companies. Tesla is the car company that makes electric cars and battery gigafactories. SolarCity is the smallest company founded on bringing solar energy to the masses. And then there is SpaceX.
SpaceX has brought the Space Race back into the 21st century. Musk's goal is to eventually have a SpaceX team travel to Mars. And he is not joking about this. They are hitting almost every milestone along the way. But the best part of this entire story, is that we get to watch it live. The ups and downs, wins and failures. It's an awesome Design Thinking process happening right in front of our eyes.
In 2005 when he was starting out on this journey with SpaceX, Musk said the following:

Failure has been a huge part of SpaceX's ethos since the beginning. In fact, they almost failed their way out of business.
2006: First launch—failure
2007: Second launch—failure
2008: Third launch—failure
They only had enough money and resources left for one more launch. It needed to be successful in order to get any type of funding.  As described in the post linked to above, here's what happened:
A friend of Musk, Adeo Ressi, describes it like this: “Everything hinged on that launch … If it works, epic success. If it fails — if one thing goes differently and it fails — epi

An Interview with Ross Cooper and Erin Murphy of Hacking Project Based Learning. We talk about the HOW, not just the WHY of PBL.
 

I had the chance a while back to interview Bo Adams from Mount Vernon Presbyterian School. 
Bo is the Chief Learning and Innovation Officer at MVPS and Executive Director of MVIFI. He has a wonderful story to tell about Mount Vernon and his own personal journey into this current role and work.
Listen to hear how MVPS continues to lead the way with a heart for empathy, and a focus on inquiry, impact, and innovation.

 I received a number of emails and questions about what types of “innovative work” I’ve seen in my role as a teacher, administrator, and speaker around the country. To be honest, there has been so much great work I’ve witnessed in my own district and traveling that it is hard to share it all. I’ve widdled it down to ten (because that seems like a solid number right?). These are some of the examples I share when doing workshops and working with teachers because I know they work and there are many teachers they can collaborate with that are already doing this type of learning.
I’m calling these 10 examples practical because I believe they are doable. They work in most grade levels, in most schools, in most situations. However, as we talked about in a previous post, you and your students are going to have to be the ultimate decision makers on whether or not any of these ideas would work.
1. Let Your Students Design the Learning We all have those assignments, assessments, and units that need some revitalization. Often we toil, thinking about how we can design a project or activity that is going to engage our students and empower them to do amazing work. One time, I didn’t do this. One time, I asked and had a conversation with my students about the final assessment. And that one time turned into one of the most innovative projects I’ve ever been a part of: Project Global Inform. You see, when I brought my students into the actual “designing” process they took an enormous amount of ownership in how we would structure this final project, how we would grade this final project, and what the expectations were from them. Give your students a chance to design the learning with you and watch what can happen.
2. Run a Student-Led Edcamp In 2014 I read about Jason Seliskar running an “Elementary Unconference” as an Edcamp for his 4th grade students. It was fantastic. Thes students create their own learning boards (just like in Edcamp), schedule for the day/class, and then become experts and learners in each other’s session. Since then I’ve seen a number of schools and teachers run student-led edcamps (here is one at a MS) with great success. Why does it work? For the same reason Edcamp works for us teachers: They own the learning and experience.
3. Collaborate Globally I’ve written about this before. Participating in my first Global project (Flat Classroom Project) with my students changed me as a teacher and my perspective of what types of learning experiences we can have “in school” with our students. Now there are many different global collaboration/learning experiences you can take part in. Whether it is joining up for the Global Read Aloud, setting up a Mystery Skype callwith another class, or taking part in the first-ever Global Day of Design, your students can have the opportunity to work and learn with peers from around the world.
4. Maker Projects and Design Thinking Challenges Get your students making, creating, designing, building, and solving problems together with a Maker Project or Design Thinking Challenge. Check out the GlobalDayOfDesign.com for free ideas and Maker Projects to get started.
5. Genius Hour and 20% Time I get messages from teachers every day that have taken my free course on Genius Hour and 20% Time or read my book that are so excited about the work their students are doing. Genius Hour and 20% Time empowers students to go into a depth around a topic that they are curious about. They learn, research, document, and share their process with the world. This eventually turns into a time to create (based on what they have learned) and then present with their peers and much larger authentic audience. Giving students choice to learn and create based on their interests is one of the best ways to create the conditions for innovative work.
6. Class Challenge (Do It Together!) When I taught 11th grade English one of the best experiences was collaborating with my g

Usually, when I write a blog post it is because I want to dig deeper into a topic and explore its merit. The post then becomes my way of explaining to myself, and to anyone who reads it, the underlying ideas and what my thoughts, experiences, and takeaways are on the topic.
This post is different. Today I want to talk about one of the most important topics to me: the future of our children.
But I’m not going to dive into this topic by myself. I’m not going to cover it in a huge four-part series like I recently wrote. Instead, I want to share excerpts and thoughts from one of the most thought-provoking articles I’ve ever read on the subject. 
Maybe you are like me with four kids all young, all with a wide open possibility of what life is going to be like. Maybe you don’t have any kids, or maybe your kids are all grown, or maybe you have grandkids. In any case, if you are a teacher, leader, or learner it always comes back to our kids (at least it should always come back to what is best for kids).
You can read the full article yourself (but it is extremely long at over 10,000 words) and I wanted to paraphrase and highlight some key takeaways from the article, mainly to make sure that we are thinking about and discussing this idea in our homes and in our schools.
The question is, “Are we raising/preparing/teaching our students/children to be chefs or cooks?”
Tim Urban explains the difference between a chef and a cook in his post for the blog >Wait But Why:
The words “cook” and “chef” seem kind of like synonyms. And in the real world, they’re often used interchangeably. But in this post, when I say chef, I don’t mean any ordinary chef. I mean the trailblazing chef—the kind of chef who invents recipes. And for our purposes, everyone else who enters a kitchen—all those who follow recipes—is a cook.
Everything you eat—every part of every cuisine we know so well—was at some point in the past created for the first time. Wheat, tomatoes, salt, and milk go back a long time, but at some point, someone said, “What if I take those ingredients and do this…and this…..and this……” and ended up with the world’s first pizza. That’s the work of a chef.
Since then, god knows how many people have made a pizza. That’s the work of a cook.
The chef reasons from first principles, and for the chef, the first principles are raw edible ingredients. Those are her puzzle pieces, her building blocks, and she works her way upwards from there, using her experience, her instincts, and her taste buds.
The cook works off of some version of what’s already out there—a recipe of some kind, a meal she tried and liked, a dish she watched someone else make.
What all of these cooks have in common is their starting point is something that already exists. Even the innovative cook is still making an iteration of a burger, a pizza, and a cake.
At the very end of the spectrum, you have the chef. A chef might make good food or terrible food, but whatever she makes, it’s a result of her own reasoning process, from the selection of raw ingredients at the bottom to the finished dish at the top.
A cook is then considered a follower. They can even be a creative follower, but they’ll never create from their own understanding, but instead always build on what others have done. They are often doing old things in new ways.
Chefs, on the other hand, are experimenting and doing new things in new ways. They are building and experimenting and often failing.
Are we encouraging students to experiment like a chef? Are we supporting them when their efforts turn into “terrible” food? Do we only praise students for cook-like efforts?
Urban explains how, from a very young age, many of us have been rewarded for cook-like behaviors, while discouraged from digging deep like a chef might do:
Everyone’s raised differently, but for most people I know, it went something like this:
We were taugh

DT Phase
Activity
Empathy/
Look and Learn
Visit #1: The Science Behind our Brains and What People Care About.

Team-Building Activity: Escape the Room

Objective: Identifying problems and who those problems impact.
Researching
Visit #2: Effective research and study design

How to Make Toast

Objective: A plan of action for researching ideas and defining/refining their audience needs.
Ideating
Visit #3: Navigating Ideas from a Brainstormed List

Whiteboard Activity

Objective: Come with current data and analysis. Choose problem to work on and begin ideating (coming up with solutions)
Prototyping/
Creating
Visit #4: Narrowing Solutions and Rapid Prototype

Rapid Prototyping Challenge

Objective: Finalize 1-2 solutions and come up with a plan for prototyping/creating solution.
Revise/Iteration
Visit #5: How to Use Feedback to Improve Your Solution

Pitch Your Product

Objective: Pitch finalized prototype and develop plan for getting feedback for further iteration.
Launch
Visit #6: Product-Market Fit and Successfully Sharing Your Solution with the World

Objective: Plan for how to sell, pitch, and market your solution to the masses (your audience).