Innovative Design - Case #2

In my opinion, the standard for a student as an innovative designer relates to all the 21st century skills. All the indicators to an innovative designer lean a little more heavily to critical thinking and creativity than communication and collaboration. In order to deliberate design process to generate ideas, test theories, and so on, a student must be able to critically think about what the best way to approach the design process and then use their creativity to create something new. In order to select and use digital tools to plan and manage a design process that considers design constraints and calculated risks students will need to first again, think critically. Approaching this indicator with a thought out plan will make things much easier on the student. To test, design, and refine prototypes a student must be able to make observations about what does and does not work, more critical thinking. In the refine process, students may need to come up with some out of the box ideas to resolve their issues. Now, these can be done individually or as a group. If done in group work that is when collaborating and communicating will factor into play. The students can work together to try to create a better product.

I think that a few attributes that an educator needs to ensure that their students achieve these standards are;

• Tolerant
• Knowledgeable
• Trusting

An educator needs to be tolerant of unorthodox ideas that students may come up with. There may be simpler solutions; however, students need express their creativity and constantly negating their ideas will limit their potential. An educator needs to be knowledgeable of the technology being used and the subject at hand. If a student is having complications, they should be able to seek advice from their teacher to get back on track. An educator needs to be trusting of their student. If the educator cannot trust their student with access to technology, they will only be limiting their students tools to learn with.

My Sophomore year English teacher fulfilled these attributes and then some. At that time, my schools policies were fairly lax about cell phone use in the classroom. It basically came down to teacher preference. When we were working on projects in class, the teacher would let us use our phones to look up information, listen to music, find media, etc. If a student was having any issues with a search engine or website, our teacher would usually bring up that site on the smart-board for the class to see and show us how it was supposed to work. What I like most about that teacher is that they were extremely tolerant. You could be extremely wrong in an essay, but if you could effectively argue your point, the teacher would not hold it against you. The teacher did a good job at keeping their personal beliefs out of their grading process.