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So, you've heard about student agency or student-driven learning, and possibly the same thing under some other awesome buzzword :-). The idea of learners taking charge of, and feeling responsible for their learning is yet to challenge any teacher I've spoken to. But there are issues. The problem lies in three common questions:

1. Are all children capable of driving their own learning?

2. What's the role of the teacher?

3. How do I start?

So we need to consider what this looks like in all contexts. I can confirm that it does apply in all situations but is only successful if the teachers know their role and they equip students with the tools to, and practice in driving their own learning. So I thought I'd produce a simple template for teachers to use to develop their student-driven learning. I've written before about the most difficult part in this process being the shifting of both teacher and student mindsets. It requires an open mind in regards to the purpose of school and the idea that maybe existing education approaches have failed to ready most teenagers for what the "real-world" has in-store ... as if they don't already exist as citizens in the real world already!

Learning to drive

When people seem pessimistic towards student-driven learning, I often find myself making the ironic conversational segue to "learning to drive." Even the most conservative teacher or parent accepts that to learn to drive a car, people have to drive a car! Even one's first driving lesson includes making the car go forward yourself. Driving a car is one of the most dangerous things we do in life and yet we still don't hesitate to place 16-year-olds immediately behind the wheel if we expect them to cope on the road after lessons. It's the role of the driving instructor we need to consider. The instructor's role (sometimes carried out less than successfully by parents) is to ensure the learner will be able to drive without them. This seems like an obvious and sensible approach, so why do most schools still take the opposite approach to learning other things? After 13 years of education, most 18-year-olds are still being coached by their teacher, point-by-point in preparing for assessments. The classroom might be the primary vehicle for learning but teachers must start letting students drive the vehicle if they expect them to cope without their direct instruction.

Tools for learning

The first thing needed is learners equiped to learn. To learn anything, one needs to be immersed in an authentic situation as possible, be making decisions and learning from them, aware of all options available, including time and collaborators, and measuring success and planning next steps. For example, this is exactly how I learnt to both blog at the age of 35 and skateboard at the age of 12. In a world that prioritises one's ability to adapt and relearn, the new role for teachers is equipping students with the tools, experience, and thus confidence to take charge of their own learning.

This includes tools that allow the learners to:

1. Think deeply (time - discussion)

2. Set goals/purpose and choose/locate resources (people/info)

3. Organise workflow (What to do 1st/2nd/3rd)

4. Measure current success (Designing assessment matrix)

5. Plan next steps (What to develop / move on from)

Here's my infographic for learning tools:

Teachers need to equip students to quickly point to the tools they use to:

Know what to tighten / do next (What's my adjustable spanner?)
Design thinking is a good example of this.

measure current success (What's my tape measure?)
co-constructed assessment matrix are good for this

Decide from a range of outcome / output options (What's my paintbrush?)
Presented in class, published to the world, connected to community?

manage time and resources (What's my stopwatch?)
Project management apps and negotiated timetables can help students feel responsible for time and resources.

communicate and connect with people inside and outside the classroom. (Where's the conversation?)
The professional use of social media is still alien to most classrooms.

A teacher's new script

The primary tool in developing student-driven learning, while also helping to change the mindset towards learning for all involved is a new script for teachers. This is the part that I personally found difficult. Despite discussing it for decades, thousands of teachers still struggle with switching from "sage on the stage" to "guide on the side." To be a successful guide or mentor, you have to use a different script from that of a teacher. How teachers communicate with students can define who feels responsible for the learning, so choose your words carefully. Any questions to students need to emphasise their responsibility for progressing further. The conversations need to be learning focused rather than topic focused and expect further thinking. Here are just some examples:

move from "What are you doing?" to "Why are you doing this?" or "Why is this the priority at the moment?"

move from "how's it going?" to "What do you need to improve so far?" or "How do you know you're on track?"

move from "Are you finished?" to "What might this lead to next?" or "Who could this project or information have an impact on?"

move from "Do you understand that topic X is ABC?" to "How do you know you understand that topic X is?"

Questions must demand specific, quantifiable answers from learners who show an obvious sense of responsibility for the activity. This can't be achieved if the ground work isn't done by teachers to equip the students with the learning tools, skills and most importantly, the expectations that they can drive their own learning.

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So, you've heard about student agency or student-driven learning, and possibly the same thing under some other awesome buzzword :-). The idea of learners taking charge of, and feeling responsible for their learning is yet to challenge any teacher I've spoken to. But there are issues.

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Do you ever teach a class?
By 'teach' I mean talk to the whole class to share instruction or discuss content. If the answer is yes, then I would like to examine your aims in doing so. The three common reasons for talking to a whole class are:

I believe that only the first of these 3 can be said to succeed in it's aims and even then fails often. All forms of learning should offer equal opportunity to all, not only to be involved but succeed in the learning intentions. Every learner deserves to maximise their time available to ensure they definitely learn and grow. People are different and so any one-size-fits-all mechanism is guaranteed to fail to be fair to all. I have spoken to people of all ages who agree that teacher verbal + visuals delivery of content to a large audience (more than 5) only suits a small minority who can focus, retain and process the information as it is shared. Photo Credit

Let's examine each one in turn.

A. Task instruction

A task instruction should be 5 minutes at most. Even if a list of instructions are verbally delivered to the class, at least they are static, surface level information that can hopefully be easily repeated and spread through the class by the learners themselves. I've seen many teachers upset that tasks were not carried out as per instruction but this is solved by ensuring their is a mechanism or practice designed to receive and record the instructions. This is the least of our worries.

B. Delivery of content (big topic!)
Question: Why is traditional class teaching / lecturing still so popular?
Answer: It's the easiest option available to any teacher. They know their topics, they know their script, they did the same lecture last year (most of the time) and thus it requires no preparation, no planning of student activity, no thought as to the current relevance of the content and in most schools, nobody will complain as students will be blamed for not 'studying' if they fail. Easy!

An important aim should be that every moment in the development of young people in schools is fully inclusive. Even the idea that a variety of teaching techniques is ok suggests that waisting the time of 50% of learners for 40 minutes is ok as we'll cater for them later on. This is not good education.

10 assumptions behind teaching a whole class (single-point delivery of content) are that:

1. All listeners are listening. If they're not, that's their fault.

2. If listening, all listeners can absorb information at the same pace.

3. All students will be present for this once-a-year performance. If not, too bad.

4. All listeners understand at the same level. (Your delivery caters for both slow and fast processors equally)

5. All listeners only require the one delivery (or you'll be repeating yourself any number of times)

6. All learners hold the courage to stop you and ask questions publicly (Self esteem has no impact on learning)

7. There's not much that can be done as some learners are just better at 'learning'.

8. Delivery style can make teaching 'entertaining' and thus work for most. (after all, you can't cater for all)

9. Students ask for lectures, they like them and these requests have nothing to do with a desire to passively disengage during the teacher's 'performance'

10. Some kids are just cut out for school more than others and can concentrate. That's life!

Even if you accept that only some of the assumptions above are not true then you have to accept that by not catering for all, delivery of content to any audience larger than about 5 people, fails immediately in it's aim to include all in the learning. Education must move on and take much more flexible, student-centred forms if it is to fulfil its aims for all learners.
Here's a version for Star Wars fans 😀

First Step

The next question for most teachers is: how can I get through all this content whilst catering for all types of learners and offering flexibility?

Your first step into student-centred learning is to remove the one-size-fits-all delivery and "Flip" the content online. Flipped teaching is a few years old now and has been presented as a structured programme of: "watch the lesson for homework, then do activity in class." I prefer to not structure it so much. Once I've said and shown what I need online, I can feel confident to handover the designing of activities to the student.

Some students share headphones to watch the teaching videos in class, some watch at home and some don't need the lesson at all. Everyone goes at their own pace and I challenge the whole class to only prove certain understandings or solve certain problems. The time freed up by not teaching the whole class allows me to dedicate all my time to individuals or small groups requesting extra assistance. This also allows the students to involve more people outside the class in their projects.

First App - Teach the way you've always done but more efficiently.

Here's a little intro into the Explain Everything App. My first Flipping tool 2 years ago. All teachers need to know their year long courses are actually only 3 hours of teaching, once you remove the pauses, tangents, diagram-drawing time, mistakes etc. I've recorded 7 high school courses for ages 14 to 18 and they all came under 3 hours. 1st time Flipped teachers don't know what to do with themselves.

C: Class Discussion

This is a grey area and can depend on the skills of the teacher. Designing how the discussion will include all and then how to manage the discussion as it takes place is tricky. Very few people have the skills to really have everyone in the room feeling confident they can be involved. Large group discussion can be heavily influenced by personalities, which can act as obstacles to the aim that all learn equally. Unless you divide the room into smaller discussion groups and help structure how each individual will feel included, discussion can rarely succeed in all its aims.

Conclusion

If your young or old learners have devices, they are free to access your teaching when and however it suits them. It is time to open up learning as something they do in life, tackle and enjoy together and not just something they receive from a single point at a single time. Learning is also something every teacher should be doing and it is most important that every teacher model good learning behaviour. Technology has quickly changed the educational landscape and it's time for all teachers to learn to navigate and be part of this landscape.

I posted more ideas about why this is important here: iPad Teaching is NOT about iPads

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Do you ever teach a class? By 'teach' I mean talk to the whole class to share instruction or discuss content. If the answer is yes, then I would like to examine your aims in doing so. The three common reasons for talking to a whole class are: Task instruction; Delivery of content/concept/facts; Class discussion.

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Making learning visible

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What is assessment for learning? / Underlying principles of assessment for learning / Assessment in the classroom / Home - Assessment

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Assessment for learning is best described as a process by which assessment information is used by teachers to adjust their teaching strategies, and by students to adjust their learning strategies.

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How all elements point towards future ready education.

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Rationale, explanations and links.

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A recent job vacancy for a leading position in a New Zealand school asked for a focus on genuine student-centred learning. What fascinated me was their use of the word 'genuine'. My experience shows me that confusion, misinterpretation, and a lack of exposure to relevant examples, means that too many educators do not understand true student-centric learning. Many schools feel under pressure to be implementing such models but often only change surface level elements whilst proclaiming they have achieved it.

Why being student-centric matters

Let's cut to the chase. This matters because we all know that young people (including ourselves many moons ago) would rather stay at home than go to school. If students tell people that they like school, what they're often picturing as they say it are things such as hangin' with friends, music productions or the sports events. When students are asked what their favourite part of school is, they rarely mention anything that takes place in a classroom. I recently asked 3 boys, who had moved from elementary to junior high, what was positive about the change. They actually agreed on "moving between rooms" as the first improvement that sprung to mind. That's right folks, their best part of the daily school experience is the brief time spent in the corridors! All you have to do is endure an hour with one teacher and then you get a break for 5 minutes before the next.

The New Zealand education review office that runs quality assurance checks on schools' practice recently reported on 68 schools that :
"Students in all schools were experiencing an assessment- driven curriculum and assessment anxiety. In many schools the only people who understood the overall curriculum and the competing demands on them were the students." - ERO "Success in secondary school
The constant amongst most schools that drives this pessimistic view held by students is that they rarely control any significant part of their day. As an example of how common this view is, I can even use teachers to prove my point. I've worked in four schools that have all held teacher training days. During a number of those days, sessions have been prearranged to showcase tools or pedagogies and staff have moved from one session to another. Many of these days have received feedback that they were not very useful. A recent example I experienced broke the trend and offered longer sessions of self-directed time for colleagues from the same department to work on their own material. The feedback included:
"Best staff training days so far, we got to work on our own stuff and had time to get things done. It was great to work with other departments" - Teachers
Many teachers agree that student-directed learning makes sense when it comes to their own learning but this rarely translates to their approach to teaching. Releasing control is always difficult, so I thought I'd do my best to outline some practical questions and advice from my own experience that will hopefully make some teachers reconsider their need for absolute control of when, what and how learning takes place.

1. TIME(TABLE) TO LEARN

Timetabling the day has more impact than you think. As the teachers highlighted above, how the day is divided often shapes it's potential to engage people in learning. A comment by a New Zealand principal has confused many educators I've shown it to:
"The timetabling I've grown to love is that which subjugates the timetable to its role of representing the vision and values of the school and bringing life to the curriculum design principles that emerge from the vision and values - a timetable that is flexible and responsive with the needs of the learner firmly at the centre." - Mauri Abraham (NZ Principal)
The idea of a timetable representing the vision for the school confuses many. The way you allocate time indicates your school's priorities and thus your values. This is because teachers who are used to a day centred on the their needs don't view the timetable as an enabler for students to learn but as another mechanism for managing them.

One major requirement for learning is reflection. Hardly any schools timetable for it.

"We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience."
― John Dewey

Students are normally given no time to reflect on recent learning before they are thrown into another unrelated lesson (High school) or topic (elementary).

2. RELEASE CONTROL

If your timetable is focused on the needs of the learners rather than teachers then you'll be free to let the students shape a great deal of your teachers' day. One issue that both restricts student experience and makes it less engaging is that the whole day is often prearanged by the teachers for the teachers. Where to be, what to look at and what to aim for has been predicted and so actually demands less challenge. Learning happens when best when the learner is immersed in the experience. To truly immerse, a learner must have input into that experience.

Compliance is not learning, even if it results in good grades. Teachers should arrive at work wondering how they will be needed, not how students will conform to their pre-arrangements. I've always thought that the prescribed experience of school that teachers experienced in the 20th century is to blame for so many not taking ownership of their own professional development. Many are still waiting for the imaginary PD timetable and activities to be written for them. I wouldn't want to think we were breeding another generation of people who wait for learning to be arranged.

3. allow technology to reach its potential

Technology is not essential, but it helps. A large number of schools are now using technology but teachers' prearranged learning and goals restrict the experience for students in what potential there is to explore and discover with technology and the internet. Rather than learn, they are asked to use technology to achieve prearranged targets. This does not allow them to experience the same real learning process that people do outside classrooms.

Most young people are used to exploring and contributing to online discussion and events in their personal life. Many schools don't make the most of this and create an abstract environment where study material has already been sorted and the path a discussion will follow is already well trodden by previous classes. Access to technology should be an empowering opportunity and I hope teachers ask students to surprise them with what the can achieve rather restrict expectations with rigidly structured tasks.

4. Students owning their assessment

Involving students in the design of assessment is both crucial to engagement and exactly what any learning involves when people outside schools undertake a challenge. If adults attempt to learn anything they start by setting criteria for how they will know they've reached their goal, be it piano or a google chrome extension. This is also something we generally deny students in schools. They are normally adhering to someone else's idea of success. In doing this, teachers and schools remove an important personal connection to the learning experience.

I have experimented much in the last 3 years by challenging students to consider what marks success within each task they undertake. I have been surprised by how engaging this activity is for my students. It might be because it's a novelty in relation to other learning they do but one group, for example, extended the assessment design to a full week of lessons without any encouragement from me!

Even if you are working in a high school and assessments set by high authorities. Ensure your students have time to review the course demands and construct their own list of requirements. To some teachers, this will seems like a waste of time, when they have already done it for them. But again, I stress that it is part of true learning and to remove this step only creates an environment of compliance and the skill of learning is not developed by the students.

Like reflection, considering one's own success criteria is an important part of the learning process and schools should reintroduce this if learning is ever to be considered as authentic and meaningful.

Don't just state your vision but be it

Many schools will state that they want students to be independent, responsible and confident. But if your students are walking into a school environment where every aspect is prearranged, you remove the need to be independent, responsible and confident about anything significant. We say practice makes progress, well let's start allowing students to practice what we want them to become.

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A recent job vacancy for a leading position in a New Zealand school asked for a focus on genuine student-centred learning. What fascinated me was their use of the word 'genuine'. My experience shows me that confusion, misinterpretation, and a lack of exposure to relevant examples, means that too many educators do not understand true...

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Pam Hook's site on students and teachers mastering their level of understanding.

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The secret behind not running on autopilot

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The surprising habits of original thinkers | Adam Grant | TED

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How to make toast ... sounds easy?

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Tom Wujec: Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast

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The New Zealand Curriculum / Kia ora - NZ Curriculum Online

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Curriculum design and review is a continuous, cyclic process.

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No lessons, No Classrooms, No subjects, No tests (nearly)

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Hobsonville Point Schools share a common vision to create a stimulating, inclusive learning environment which empowers learners to contribute confidently and responsibly in our changing world.

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Why the current running of the school day needs to be questioned.

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Reminding teachers of what it's really like to be a student in school is one of my favourite professional pass times. I was presenting at a conference recently and at 3pm, many teachers were talking about being overloaded with information and how tired they were. I highlighted that this was exactly what it's like to be at school except they had not even been asked for any outcomes or work and would not have to do this for the following 200 days! They all agreed this was good news for them. But what about our students?

Thanks to my friend Danielle Myburgh for telling me to get on with producing a Factory Education poster!

IS School is still a burden?

My presentation (Slides below) was on Learner agency: the purpose, control and ownership students do or don't feel they have over their learning. I started with a 1957 Chuck Berry line: ""Soon as three o'clock rolls around, you finally lay your burden down" I highlighted how 40 years of almost zero development had led Bart Simpson in the 1990s to share the common joy of : "woo hoo! Snow Day!" I asked the audience of about 50 teachers to fill out 2 Google form questions to confirm if they thought the school day was still a "burden." Even with a massive majority of elementary school teachers, there was still a 50% agreement that it was. I'm sure this figure would have been higher with high school teachers.

Top students hide their grievances

3 examples I gave of academically successful students not rating the school expericene as positive, regardless of being able to comply with it, were:

1. A top grade 7 student regularly achieving a top 3 in class tests and projects, excelling at two sports and working as a library assistant, expressing most mornings how she did not want to go to school due to it being "really boring!" This was the last student her teachers would expect to have this attitude towards school. What must the less engaged be saying?

2. The head girl and head boy in a high school both starting the respective 'high achievers' speeches with implications that their success was in spite of school not because of it. The top female student highlighted that she had been a well supported high achiever from day one and school had been a great opportunity to show how her already positive approach to challenges could yield great results. The male top student semi-joked that making his bed every morning had started his day with a sense of pride and achievement meaning his self-worth would approach the required compliance in school more positively.

Employers and Universities share their GRIEVANCES

1. "teenagers are leaving school lacking basic skills" - UK (Source)

2. "School leavers are not meeting the needs of the New Zealand workplace, according to an employer survey." - NZ (Source)

3. "... despite being fully eligible to attend college, they are not ready for postsecondary studies" - US (Source)

My presentation also included 3 examples of the 100s of articles and reports you can find to show employers, universities and even parents are commonly under impressed or disappointed by the motivation and skill set held by school leavers. I highlighted that Malcolm Gladwell's Ten thousand hour rule, would expect that after 12 or 13 years of 5 hours a day experience, students would be extremely motivated and skilled to make significant impact on the world. The fact that they are commonly unmotivated and lacking confident to tackle situations without significant guidance and scaffolding, means we have them practicing the wrong things.

Tackle Deja Vu with "VuJa de!"

I came across "Vuja De" when a friend of mine, Steve Mouldey introduced me to the Curious Minds Podcast interview with Adam grant.

'Vuja De' definition: "The vuja de mentality is the ability to keep shifting opinion and perception. It can mean reversing assumptions about cause and effect, or what matters most versus least. It means not traveling through life on automatic pilot." - Bob Sutton - 'Scaling Up for Excellence'

It is time for all school leaders to question every aspect of deja vu within their professional life. This is best explained in the way that comedians take a seemingly fresh look at everyday occurrences and by highlighting them, make us laugh out loud. This type of perspective is required if school leaders are to ever see that what they think is being successful within their factory school model is not serving either the children or their future.

Here are my slides:

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Reminding teachers of what it's really like to be a student in school is one of my favourite professional pass times. I was presenting at a conference recently and at 3pm, many teachers were talking about being overloaded with information and how tired they were. I highlighted that this was exactly what it's like to...

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School re-designed

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If you ask me, the elephant in the classroom, especially high school classrooms has always been the fact that teachers would rarely choose for themselves, the daily experience they inflict on their students. [Img Cred]

If you ask a high school teacher if they'd be happy with a daily experience such as:

an hour of trigonometry;

an hour of Macbeth;

an hour of plate tectonics;

an hour of tennis, followed by

an hour of chemical reactions

with no attempt to relate any of the learning.

oh, and do you want to sit in the middle of 300 teenagers for an hour long assembly?

Nearly all teachers say NO! (I've asked many)

So, two questions for schools:
1. What excuses do we have for creating a learning experience we wouldn't choose for ourselves? 2. Why are we surprised at an increasing dropout rate and general switching off from school in a connected and active world of Facebook and Youtube?
An alternative with positive outcomes.

This year a visited a school that had re-purposed their existing physical classroom / corridor spaces, and redesigned their timetable to create a whole new learning experience. I could see within 10 minutes that the students were more driven and positive about school than in most schools I've been to. It did this by dividing itself into a mini-schools within the site. Rather than confine each student to a particular room from which learning would be 'received', every student had permission to design their own school day (every day) and had free access to up to 4 differently purposed rooms depending on what their needs were at any particular moment.

New use of school space

The 4 rooms that each child had free access to would include:

1. a "Cave" (silent room),

2. a pairs room (for peer tutoring),

3. a group room (for project/teamwork)

4. a tutorial room (They had to book into tutorials that the teachers ran on a rotation).

It was up to the children to use these spaces according to needs and be responsible for productive time management. Something that was very evident during my visit, where I could see that through practice and extensive experience in self-driven learning, the average student was more confident, organised and keen to discuss their progress.

New use of School time

Students are free to organised their own day. They had to book into a certain amount of tutoring in a week but by choice could tailor the tuition to their needs. They negotiated inquiry projects at the beginning of terms and worked on them in teams. They were encouraged to work together and solve their own problems. They also booked out technology from a central hub when required, rather than assume that technology was a must all day, like some schools suggest.

New use of Teachers

Teachers rotate between giving tutorials and roaming as mentors. A nice touch is for the principal to be signing off the final projects. Teachers have more time to talk to students and guide teams in their negotiated inquiries. Teachers were happier through working with students who were intrinsically motivated to learn on projects designed by themselves. All the national curriculum and regular content was still covered and any direct teaching needed was available, just never in a one-size-fits-all approach.

Question the old, not the new

One simple piece of advice is to spend more energy challenging your school's status quo, than any alternative that might be suggested. Turn around and challenge that "elephant" that so many teachers and even more students are talking about.

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If you ask me, the elephant in the classroom, especially high school classrooms has always been the fact that teachers would rarely choose for themselves, the daily experience they inflict on their students. [Img Cred] If you ask a high school teacher if they'd be happy with a daily experience such as: an hour of trigonometry; an hour...

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Really good way to scaffold for strategy towards problem solving

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Design thinking is a powerful tool to really get your students thinking about and tackling a problem or topic at a much deeper level. It is a structured task that focuses on giving considerable time to thinking about and empathising with the people within the situation (Target audience or client), designing and prototyping a possible solution that is immediately challenged in order to improve it. It is used much in business and the design industry but can be used as a general classroom task within any subject area. It also gets students to work quickly without much introduction.
Design thinking promotes creative thinking, team work, and student responsibility for learning.
It is a form of solution-based, or solution-focused thinking; starting with a goal (a better future situation) instead of solving a specific problem. This keeps minds open to multiple solutions.
The core rules behind Design Thinking:

1. The Human Rule: All Design Activity Is Ultimately Social in Nature

2. The Ambiguity Rule: Design Thinkers Must Preserve Ambiguity

3. The Re-design Rule: All Design Is Re-design

4. The Tangibility Rule: Making Ideas Tangible Always Facilitates Communication

The infographic / poster above is a guide to a simplified version you can use in your classroom. This version can be carried out in an hour, over a week, or even longer.

This versions splits the task into 5 key stages. It's good to set fixed time frames for each of these stages and for their sub stages.

1. Goal Setting (Whole Class)
HOW MIGHT WE DESIGN / ACTION WHAT AND FOR WHOM IN ORDER TO CHANGE SOMETHING?
The first stage is to devise an atoll goal to improve something. This is best started with 3 key words: "How might we ..." Starting this way can have a powerful effect on successful classroom engagement. " How" is a word that has a bias towards action. It implied the something is to be done. " Might" acts as a safety blanket as it offers the students the freedom to fail. This ensures that more are likely to give it a go. " We " pushes the collective responsibility and collaborative aspect meaning nobody will be alone. It also removes the classroom hierarchy, bringing the teacher onto the same level as learner alongside the students.

During this goal setting stage it is important to select as a class:

"WHAT" = An object - E.g. App, Gadget, Speech, Toy, Campaign, Website etc.

"WHOM" = A Specific Client/target - E.g playground users, garbage droppers etc.

"CHANGE" = A better world - E.g. Target result, Improved situation,

Examples:

As an extra idea, I have considered it even as a fun theoretical teaching task such as:

How might an iPad app have helped George Washington win the War of independence in half the time?

There's nothing to stop posting up a number of big ideas or challenges for teams to pick from but ensure the students have been part of formulating them.

2. Thinking - Individual then Group

Decide on an amount of time that students will individually think around the topic. This personal thinking space is important for letting quiet, reflective and deeper thinking take place to start the process off. This might only be 5 or 10 minutes but means more will come to the table when the group starts discussions.

The individual thoughts are then brought to the group. I recommend groups of 3 or 4 as bigger than this can become less manageable for the students.
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3. Empathise

a) Facts b) Opinions c) Interactions

This is the crucial stage where considering the people and situation that the solution will be dealing with is broken down into 3 stages to help the students allow for as fuller picture as possible. These 3 stages might take anything from 10 to 30 minutes.

First the Profile the target as a list of facts. What do they do? What do they have? What are we dealing with physically?

Second they imagine or research all the typical opinions and feelings that the solution will have to allow for.

Thirdly they consider all the connections within the situation. Who talks to who? Who shares things with who? Who or what competing with what or who?

By the end of this stage, the students will have done far more genuine thinking about the situation than they might have done if asked to just "research the situation."

4. Solution Design - "Ideate"

A minimum of 20 minutes is now needed for the group to dream up a solution. The important emphasis here is that no idea should be squashed too quickly. Let the students dream up ideas that may or may not be possible and allow the discussion and challenge evolve. The point of this whole process is for all possibilities to surface and be challenged. Sometimes the craziest idea can lead to successful divergent solutions.

App and gadget design can be applied to most situations and the fact that the students may or may not be able to make the final product should't matter and allows them to focus on the needs that the product meets.
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5. Prototype Critique - Feedback & Improve

This stage simultaneously develops multiple skills whilst also encouraging a more optimistic growth-mindset as teams present and challenge each other. The emphasis here must be on growing ideas and not judgements. One thing I would highlight to students is that designers and problem solvers always seek advice and feedback and so can use and appreciate anything that gets fed back to them.

Even after good thinking and empathising stages, there's always a number of "what ifs" that any team will not have thought of. This also highlights to all students that there's always another view and this feedback loop is key to any significant success that will last. Just keep asking why? why? why?

Which apps help with Design Thinking?

Essentially, the apps that help design thinking are those that allow students to collaborate around their ideas and creative output. Here's a few to help.

Secrative can be used to canvas the class for foreseen problems to be solved and once target problems are chosen, it can then ask students to submit How might we... questions to frame the task around.

Nearpod can also be used to collate the class ideas for problems.

Post-It Plus amazingly allows an individual's real Post-its be captured by camera and shared as digital post-its with the group. You can even edit the digital copies!
Here's a review.

Drawp is another great collaborative system and app for class activities.

Talkboard is an instant and free collaborative drawing board for the group to scribble down ideas on. Might need a stylus to get the best from this.

Prezzi can be used to present a plan.

Design Think Links and Info

NoTosh are a key organisation pushing Design Thinking in education. Great info and resources.

Stanford Uni have produced a whole crash course in Design Thinking!

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Design thinking is a powerful tool to really get your students thinking about and tackling a problem or topic at a much deeper level. It is a structured task that focuses on giving considerable time to thinking about and empathising with the people within the situation (Target audience or client), designing and prototyping a possible solution that is immediately challenged in...

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Resources, explanations, posters, infographics all in one site.

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Education futures + learning how to learn