How might we bring design thinking to Glen Shields public school?

Posted on by Jenn Chan

Andrew GS

We are doing design thinking at Glen Shields Public School. We started this process with a conversation about the school and what the culture was like and how might we be able to work together on professional development, student engagement and learning design thinking.

Glen Shields is a school that hosts a community of diversity, equity, inquiry and empathy. Their principal and teachers are committed to bringing opportunities to their students and engaging their school community.

GS teachers workshop Brandond

We are starting our work with Glen Shields through teacher training on design thinking, workshops with students on design thinking and working towards building a language and foundation for work to come next year.
We have requests for more workshops and teachers saying that they are already bring the ideas back to their classrooms. It is exciting to see where this is going. The students are just embarking on their journey and we meet with them again this week. Can’t wait to see where they go!This year we are focusing on the design thinking process with 44 students and 11 educators to prototype the process.

NOISE for Change – New Opportunities for Innovative Student Engagement

Posted on by Jenn Chan

It was a cold and rainy evening when we arrived on the York University campus and found our way to the workshop room. The participants were lining up for the dinner before the workshop took place. The NOISE for Change group had been meeting since August to do work together and now in March, it was easy to see that they had clearly forged new relationships and were making an impact on one another. Meeting at York University, the high school students from Emery High School were introduced to the world of University and were embraced by their York University counterparts from Bachelors and Masters of Social Work. The NOISE for Change project is an amazing testimony to bringing together youth leaders and inspiring peer to peer projects. It was inspiring to see the investment everyone had made into the project and to each other.

Exhibit Change - 03

NOISE for Change has been making some big bangs in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood from their pilot project out of York University. “NOISE for Change, an opportunity for innovative student engagement, brought together 20 grade nines, 20 grade twelves, 20 Bachelors of Social Work students, 20 Masters of Social Work students and 20 York Social Work Alumni for such a unique program.”

In Community Action Pods, the groups worked together on projects for the community, many of them focused on bringing positive attention to the neighbourhood.

We were delighted to come and offer a Design Thinking 101 workshop for the Pods who are in the thick of their project work. As per usual, we opened up the workshop with the Oreo Cookie workshop to make an analogy to how we are all design thinkers. This activity always breaks up any apprehension that the participants have going into a design thinking workshop and put a little bit of sugar in their systems for the next bit of work.

Exhibit Change - 22

For the design thinking workshop, in our short time together, the groups explored a few possible design challenges that have popped up as projects brought forward by the community during past design jams at Green Change. Groups designed for community gardens and parking lot parties, no one wanted to take on the Tool Library, but we can come back to that another time.

The groups worked quickly at coming up with stakeholders and ideas for how they could make some of the projects a reality. As the groups are working on their own positive change projects in the neighbourhood, it was great to see them take what they have learned so far and apply that to these new challenges.

We are looking forward to seeing what comes from NOISE for Change next year as the take on new projects and youth leaders, it is inspiring to see their great work.

 

Engineers Without Borders – If change isn’t systemic, it isn’t change at all

Posted on by Jenn Chan

ewb-canadas-logo-jpg1As the engineers get ready to be deployed on their international assignments, they go through and intensive amount of training with a focus on human-centered design and empathy problem solving. Engineers Without Borders is famous for shifting the way international development work is done;

” We co-design systemic innovations with local partners, with the goal of fixing a broken system or introducing a new model.”

As well as they way they are reporting and documenting their work, EWB was the first NGO to introduce the Failure Report to learn from mistakes happening in the field directly from the staff working on the ground.

EWB Workshop The unique way in which EWB is investing in people is what made me most excited to be delivering a Design Thinking 101 workshop to them in a week where they also focus on systems thinking, foresight and experience design. Admittedly, I was a little nervous to be bringing design thinking into a room of engineers who are heading out on some absolutely amazing ventures in Africa, each one doing something that sounded more and more complicated and I just had to check-in with myself and reminded myself that these are exactly the wicked problems that design thinking can facilitate.

In just under 2 hours, after getting a breakdown of design thinking, the engineers took on a wicked problem to practice. The two designs that emerged were a self-contained shelter for a homeless person who has been kicked out of the Salvation Army for violence or substance abuse during a snowstorm in Vancouver including some augmented reality software and a floatation device that can be used as a food and health sanctuary in times of flood and conflict in Africa for women and children that could dissolve to feed and nourish the fields.

Both teams were able to dig into the challenge and emerge with some great ideas, in the reflections they realized the importance of framing the problem and being able to focus on select stakeholders, to evaluate where an “impossible” idea may feed into a realistic solution and to continue to unpack where they made decisions and had biases.

 

Launching EdCamp Design Thinking

Posted on by Jenn Chan

In 2011, I joined the inaugural EdCamp Toronto organizing committee. In 2012, I instigated EdCamp Hong Kong (the first EdCamp in Asia), participated in starting the harvest team for the second EdCamp Toronto and attended EdCamp Ottawa. Needless to say, I am a fan of the EdCamp movement and have been watching it grow over the years.  So, I was pretty excited when I passed an idea past the co-founders of Dan Callahan and Mike Ritzius to launch a spinoff of the original EdCamp with the addition of design thinking methodologies.

On February 20th, we will be hosting our first meeting and planning EdCamp Design Thinking!!! I am pretty excited 🙂

At the meeting we will be building a model for all future EdCamp Design Thinking, a model to be tested, to be hacked, to be spread. A model that is going to share the the process of problem finding, idea generation, empathy mapping, to design solutions and to pitch. The goal of EdCamp Design Thinking is to promote the 21st century skills: creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and communication as well as entrepreneurship.

I love the beginning of projects, so much potential! Our planning team currently is made up of designers, educators, innovators and people who are passionate about education.

For more information, check out the EdCamp Design Thinking wiki.

Make it happen,

Jenn

Green Change Community Consultation

Posted on by Jenn Chan

Join us for a conversation about the future of the Green Change Agents Program, in a co-design process we will be gathering input on the future of the Green Change Agents Program, the vision for the core curriculum, the “ultimate” Green Change Agent and what community partnerships look like.

Green Change Agents Program – Community Consultation

WHEN: Friday, November 30, 2012 from 12:30 pm to 4:00 pm
WHERE: Driftwood Community Centre, 4401 Jane Street (southeast corner of Jane St/Driftwood Ave)
WHO: Individuals and community partners working on, or interested in, local environmental action, community engagement/education, and social justice, as well as past participants of the Green Change Agents Training Program
OVERVIEW: Green Change presents an immersive, interactive session to (re)engage community partners and residents around the next iteration of the Green Change Agents Program and develop strong partnerships that will influence its new structure and content

HOSTS: 
Clara Stewart-Robertson, Project Coordinator for Green Change
and Jennifer Chan, Education Innovation Consultant

We have included some important background information below on the Green Change Project and Green Change Agents Program to help bring everyone up to speed. We promise that it is worth the long read! 

What have we been up to lately?
Since the last round of agent training in early 2011, the Green Change Project has experienced numerous challenges, including a complete staff turnover and the loss of organizational memory, partnerships, and participants. While the resulting transition proved difficult at times for our new staff and caused some delays in our programming – as well as the construction of our new Centre for Green Change, – it also presented an incredible opportunity to pause, breathe, and reflect upon the project at a critical stage in its development. Moreover, that very “break” gave us the space to experiment with new creative processes and activities, seek new relationships with other innovators across the city, and stretch our capacity to lead change. Many of you played a part in this exploration and we are so grateful to you for your dedication and your inspiration over the last year!

So, once we had distilled all the lessons learned as well as our emerging ambitions for the project, we recognized that we needed to:

  • Develop better organizational clarity and communication
  • Develop more systematic and systemic community outreach
  • Scale up inclusion and diversity in our operations and programs
  • Formalize our commitment to community design, environmental health, and just sustainabilities

What better place to start this transformation, we thought, than with the redesign of our cornerstone Green Change Agents Program?

The purpose of the Green Change Agents Program was, and continues to be, to uncover and grow the capabilities and potential in all Jane-Finch residents to transform the way we treat each other and the planet. Through the program, participants are offered opportunities to build their environmental knowledge, take leadership on community projects, connect with a network of local mentors, and create pathways to employment.

Can we co-produce a more effective and sustainable program? 
Over the last year or so, we have been working with graduate students from York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies to unpack what happened during those previous agent programs, interview past participants and facilitators, and discover emerging trends in the “green economy” and “green jobs.” More recently, we have begun to evaluate similar environmental education and community leadership programs operating throughout the Toronto region, Canada, the United States, and Europe to help us think about how we could do our work differently.

We will be posting more direct outputs from our research online in the coming months, but for now, please get in touch with us for more information!

How can YOU contribute to this process? 
As we begin to translate this research into more concrete ideas and practices for a revised agent program, it is important that we hear from as many different people as possible by hosting meaningful public conversations with our partners and residents. We want to ensure that we provide a fertile ground where we can all work collaboratively, creatively, and strategically toward the program’s growth and development. All of you have so many wonderful ideas, projects, and job/entrepreneurship opportunities to share with the Jane-Finch neighbourhood, and we want to find the best ways to move them forward.

Unfortunately, our timeframe for delivering a redesigned Green Change Agents Program is extremely short due the conditions of our funding. Our goal is to test run the new program this February during the “12 Days of Green Change,” and then deliver two consecutive rounds in March and June 2013. That said, we are strongly committed to ongoing dialogue and community engagement, starting with the community consultation on November 30th.

The purpose of this community consultation session will be to:

  • Share the draft vision and principles for a redesigned Green Change Agents Program
  • Engage with community partners and residents to amplify/coordinate emerging partnerships and learning opportunities
  • Collaborate on the challenges currently facing the Green Change Project

If you know other community members or organizations who might be interested in contributing to the Green Change Agents Program, please share this invitation with them or contact us directly. We will do our best to accommodate everyone at the session, however, space is limited at the Driftwood Community Centre.

Additional details: Lunch and refreshments will be served. Please let us know if you have any specific food allergies or needs. Childcare can be provided upon request.

RSVP to the Green Change team by email at cstewartrobertson@gmail.com, or call  416-663-2733, ext. 235

Growth

Posted on by Jenn Chan

Yesterday, we facilitated a furniture design charrette in Jane and Finch for the Centre of Green Change. After a bit of dinner and an idea dump on the floor about the 4 main areas of programming, the participants were off to the races. With playdoh and hot glue guns, there was little need for enticement to get some of the youth building furniture. We ended up with a variety of table designs of different heights and convertible features, some firm stances for and against benches, and a pizza oven! Designs ranged from functional to artful, each with personality and adaptability in mind. There was a desire for open spaces and hidden spaces, like the indoor treehouse reading space. There was a strong focus of bringing natural elements and inspiration.

The process delivered many ideas and introduced the project to a whole new group of youth, this furniture charrette was the beginning of a longer conversation about sustainability and what you can make with your hands.

Maybe, one day we can build this growth table.

Centre for Green Change “Design Jam”

Posted on by Jenn Chan

Together with the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre, we are hosting a Green Building Design Jam for the Centre for Green Change.

The Centre for Green Change is a new innovated space for the community of Jane and Finch residents to build awareness, be hosting community members,  designers,Toronto Community Housing Staff and York University Students to offer their ideas on the future of the Centre for Green Change. community engagement and action around environmental impacts. The Centre for Green Change will have it’s home at 2999 Jane Street. On Thursday, July 25th at 5:30pm, we will

If you’d like to attend, please email Clara Stewart-Robertson at clarasr@janefinchcentre.org

See you there!

 

Come be a part of EdCamp Hong Kong

Posted on by Jenn Chan

EdCamp Hong Kong is happening on April 21, 2012!!!! 

EdCamp HK will take place in a kindergarten classroom at a school in Hong Kong. We thought that the playful atmosphere will add to our conversation and welcome joyful new ideas. 

Registration is Open! 

EdCamp Hong Kong is an education unconference that is part of the EdCamp family. EdCamp Hong Kong is the first EdCamp to leave North America!

What are you in for? 

Here are the basic fundamentals: 

(1) The people who come are the best people who could have come.

2) Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.

3) It starts when it starts.

4) It’s over when it’s over.

5) The Law of Two Feet (“If you are not learning or contributing to a talk or presentation or discussion it is your responsibility to find somewhere where you can contribute or learn”). 

If you are interested in having a conversation about the future of education, than this is for you. You want to join because you have something to offer, something to learn or are just plain curious. Education doesn’t stop because we are out of school and it is something we all have opinions about. Come to meet new people, build a network, because you care and  want to be a part of a movement.