Category Archives: collaboration

Driving K-12 Innovation: Tech Enablers

I’ve been quite fortunate to work on the CoSN report, Driving K-12 Innovation, for the past three years. Each year I join a team of over 100 K-12 leaders, practitioners, and changemakers from around the world to look at emerging trends in K-12 education. We examine the major themes driving, hindering, and enabling teaching and learning innovation at schools around the world. 

The process involves three key steps:

  1. An initial survey to select the topics along three dimensions: Hurdles, Accelerators, and Tech Enablers;
  2. Online and virtual discussions for each dimension;
  3. A concluding survey where the advisory board rates each dimension. 

Based on the survey results the CoSN editorial team then selects the top 3 for each dimension. According to the project, “accelerators” drive teaching and learning innovation in schools, while “hurdles” hinder it. Tech Enablers are the tools that allow educators to address the barriers by accelerating the change process. 

Top Hurdles, Accelerators, and Tech Enablers for 2021

In February 2022 CoSN released the Tech Enablers:

As part of the release I participated in a Virtual Summit with many of the advisers as we looked into more detail how the Tech Enablers played out in the midst of a global pandemic. Probably no technology enabler played a more critical role than Digital Collaboration. According to the experts, “It makes Hybrid Learning possible.” Untethered Broadband and Connectivity grew dramatically as schools and other institutions grappled with the challenge of millions of new users trying to access digital resources. Analytics and Adaptive Technologies were important during the pandemic, but difficult to obtain. Parents, educators, and the students themselves needed this information to best understand where to focus on the learning. 

Here’s a cartoonist’s rendition of our conversation:

Tech Enablers: Driving K-12 Innovation Summit

Transformations

Over the holiday season a new Transformer movie appeared. There’s something engaging about the concept of transforming from one concept or shape to another. In education transformations are also quite engaging and worth investigating. This past semester I coordinated two Design Challenges for the Energy Innovation Center in Pittsburgh with schools from the Parkway West Consortium of Schools. Each Design Challenge required the student consultants to think out of the box and come up with a transformative set of ideas.

Student teams from Parkway West, Quaker Valley, and Keystone Oaks tackled the transformative challenge of “Rebranding Careers.” How do we rethink the language and images to describe technical workers? How do we change the perceptions of students and parents regarding the value of alternative choices to a college program? The student consultants developed a website with a marketing campaign, an app, and a video to address the transformative questions.

It was fascinating to watch the student consulting teams go through their own transformations. The student teams had to learn to work with not only their own team members, but with fellow consultants from other schools. The design process of moving from a set of questions to a solution requires an ability to listen to a client’s needs. For most students this is a transformative challenge. Our traditional school approach is based on a teacher-focused orientation. Students respond to the need of the teacher who, in turn is trying to look at a standard or final outcome that is built into a curriculum. What happens when you transform this process? How do teachers and students handle their roles as facilitators and consultants?

For the student teams and teachers it takes time to adjust to this challenge. However, the final product for the Rebranding Careers Design Challenge demonstrated the success for the process. What could have been three individual projects,  turned into one website that linked to each of the student consulting teams ideas. The client team from the Energy Innovation Center responded positively to the student products and intends to seek further funding to work on the prototypes shared by the consulting team.

The Bedford Facade Design Challenge had similar positive effects based on the student consulting teams’ efforts. In this case teams from South Fayette, Chartiers Valley, and Parkway West collaborated to generate a three-tiered lighting plan for the original entrance of the Energy Innovation Center erected in 1930 as the Connelley Trade School. The Design Challenge process I use enlists the aid of a series of professional experts who work with the student consultants from the kick-off through the final presentation. For this Design Challenge the Energy Innovation Center brought to the table two experts from the Duquesne Light Company of Pittsburgh. The experts explained at the kickoff that consultants often outline different financial packages in their response to a Request for Proposal (RFP). The student consulting teams took this to heart and delivered silver, gold, and platinum options for the Design Challenge.

For the student consultants the ability to think about multiple solutions was a transformative moment. In our traditional classes we tend to look for one solution that is already known, but for this Design Challenge the notion that there could be multiple approaches for a problem was quite challenging for the student teams. The client team from the Energy Innovation Center, praised this approach. It met the real needs for the project. Now the Energy Innovation Center has a much better idea on the actual costs and what would be associated with each option.

I also wanted the student teams to use a model for the building as part of their presentation. The students don’t usually think about three-dimensional elements to explain an idea. The team of students from Parkway West welded a metal model that became the key for each consultant as they visually explained how each part of the solution would work. For instance, when the student consultants talked about the use of a Lumatrix lighting solution, they were able to point to the model to indicate exactly where the projection system would go.

The key to the final success for the Design Challenge will be the actual transformation for the Bedford Avenue facade at the Energy Innovation Center. The student consulting teams outlined a thorough proposal that included CAD drawings, a cost analysis, and a 3-dimensional model for the site. The Energy Innovation Center will now look at opportunities to use the student ideas to transform the building to highlight the rich history of the building and its bright future as a center for sustainability.

Students as Designers

In the last five years there’s been a flood of attention around Design Thinking and Student Learning. Through my work with the Energy Innovation Center (EIC) and the Parkway Way Consortium of Schools near Pittsburgh I’ve had a chance to work with over 200 high school students around a series of Design Challenges. In addition, schools, like Nazareth Prep, have challenged their students to solve problems in their own community. In this article I’ll highlight some outstanding recent examples for each of these projects.

Energy Innovation Center Design Challenges

During the spring of 2018 students from Moon, Montour, Quaker Valley, West Allegheny, and the Parkway West Career and Technology Center (PWCTC) worked on two different Design Challenges. The student consultant teams from Moon and Montour joined with a team from PWCTC to examine the needs for additional LEED projects at the EIC in Pittsburgh. The teams from West Allegheny and Quaker Valley combined with digital arts students from PWCTC to delve into “Rebranding Careers.” Key to all of the activities were a series of activities that tapped into strategies that are part of the LUMA approach to Human Centered Design. For instance, students developed “concept posters” and “visualized” their evaluation of ideas. For both projects students had to develop an understanding for the needs of the client, the EIC. From the kick-off at the EIC, through a final presentation at PWCTC, students engaged in conversation with experts who provided feedback and guidance.

For the LEED Design Challenge the student consulting team at Montour created a prototype at their high school to test out an idea for a Green Wall with an aquaponics component for the EIC. The Moon team through their research realized that the recycling program at the EIC had a narrow focus. The student consultants made recommendations for a series of improvements so all materials used at the EIC could be recycled. The construction students from PWCTC built a model for a reflective light solution that would use mirrors to bring more natural light into the EIC.

The Rebranding Careers Design Challenge asked the student consultants to look at the language and images used to portray the opportunities in the trade and technical fields. The student consultants investigated new directions not only in the United States, but in Australia and Germany. The student consultants developed three pathways to educate their peers and their parents:

  • An app that would provide a personalized approach to career and college directions;
  • A BBQ career event that would use food to share the possibilities for a technical career;
  • A commercial that would use a feminine perspective to break down some of the traditional barriers in the technical world.

Many design activities are hypothetical, but each of the Design Challenges in this series were based on real world problems at the EIC. As one of the students pointed out, “I enjoyed knowing that the EIC will try to actually implement our ideas.”

Nazareth Prep Students Design Little Free Pantry for Aliquippa

One day in early July, four high school students from Nazareth Prep were admiring the fruits of their labor: a new Little Free Pantry ready to be installed outside of Uncommon Grounds Café in Aliquippa. Participants in the school’s Element summer program, these students had designed, built and created technological features for the pantry box, where members of the community can donate or retrieve food.
Made possible through a grant from the Adele & Thomas Keaney Charitable Foundation through the PNC Charitable Trusts Grant Review Committee, Nazareth Prep’s three-week Element summer program provided participants with intensive, hands-on instruction in design, woodworking and programming. The course was led by three Nazareth Prep faculty members: music and computer science teacher Leslie Chabala, engineering teacher Michael Roberts and physics teacher Eric Dunkerly.
Element students worked in two teams. The Build Team designed and constructed the physical elements of the pantry box using a variety of tools in Nazareth Prep’s Social Action Innovation Laboratory (SAIL), an MIT-approved fabrication facility. Meanwhile, the Code Team used miniature Raspberry Pi computers, Twitter bots and magnetic switches to set up a system for remotely monitoring pantry stock. The mini computers are programmed to take pictures of the pantry’s contents and upload them to Twitter when the sensors detect that the pantry has been used; community members can check the pantry’s Twitter feed to find out whether it has what they need or needs to be refilled.
Code Team student Katie Donohue reflects, “The best part of my experience was being able to watch my code take and upload pictures on its own – seeing how, through trial and error, I was able to power through and build something great.” Her teammate Cody Staudt comments, “I improved my knowledge of the Python [programming] language a lot.”
The students’ project is a high-tech approach to the Little Free Pantry model, which allows community members to share food with each other, whether they have extra items that need to be used or are running low on necessary supplies. The pantries are meant as a grassroots safety net to fill in the gaps that may be left by traditional food shelves and other resources.
Nazareth Prep’s Little Free Pantry is located outside of Uncommon Grounds Cafe, owned by parents of a Nazareth Prep student. The café runs a variety of ministries in the town of Aliquippa, where residents regularly make use of a number of previously installed Little Free Pantries. As the Nazareth Prep students wrapped up their pantry project, 11th grader Myeir Northern, who hails from Manchester, broke into a smile, exclaiming, “We really built a free pantry!” Then he started considering how he could put one in his own neighborhood.
Says instructor Chabala, “It was so great watching students be in charge of their own learning, driven by the clear goal of what the Little Free Pantry needed to do to work for the community. Students needed less and less direction and assistance as the camp went on, and by the end they were comfortable researching and creating on their own.”