“Fail, Fail Again. Fail Better.”
-Samuel Beckett
I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week in Columbus mentoring at Prototype Camp, a design thinking workshop for high school students from around the country. The camp ran in tandem with the Ohio Educational Technology conference and was centered around designing the future of education.
The workshop was, without question, the most inspirational and engaging experience I have had in years; and I have spent the last 5 years in design school. I discovered the camp while researching my capstone project, and initially had very selfish reasons for wanting to take part. Free trip to the eTech conference: not a bad way to get some research in. Not to mention 50 high schoolers thinking non stop would not be a terrible way to crowd source my project. OK, I would not have done that, but listening to their experiences and qualms with the classrooms they spend every day in was a great learning experience.
The camp started with the quote “Fail Fail, again. Fail better,” plastered on a green wall that could be seen from across the convention. Fail number 1: whoever put the comma up in the giant quote. It was fixed promptly. 50 high school juniors and seniors and a few educators and design mentors gathered in bean bag chairs and bright orange stools at the front of the space. I had never met any of them and few of them knew each other. We began by speaking with experts from around the world via Skype. Then we were thrown to the wolves.
Students were broken up into teams and spent the rest of the day brainstorming and walking through the conference speaking with teachers and vendors about the challenges faced in the classroom.
These students were perceptive. They quickly picked up on trends that I do not know if I would have questioned at their age. Why is everyone making smart boards that do essentially the same thing? Why do companies build educational tools under the guise of games without any engaging game play elements? Why are the sales people uninformed about the software and products they are selling as well as the future of their systems? Why can students not define their own curriculum? How can we help students define their individuality in a classroom of 20 or 30? The list goes on.
My group’s goals centered around individual student identity and building relationships between students and teachers. Their guiding question and goals of the project were rewritten many times throughout the workshop, but it was never negative. We tried, we failed, we failed better.
I could not have asked for a better group of students to work with. Many mentors hovered throughout the room popping in and out of groups providing guidance and critique. I feel like I may have failed as a mentor in that aspect. I met with a group of students early on and connected with them. I honestly do not think I even knew the names of other participants. I gravitate towards working in small groups. Maybe it’s selfish, but I ended up spending the majority of my time getting to know and investing emotionally with one group of students rather than providing surface level feedback to everyone.
We carved out a nook for ourselves and spent hours on bean bags discussing what we could do to make the classroom better. We were in a room full of technology, but were surrounded by post-it notes and sharpies. We barely touched a computer until the final day.
I have to give some props to my group, EPICurious, named for the philosopher Epicurus (as well as the obvious play on words) who we would not have know about if it were not for David Staley. I believe they came up with a brilliant solution. They wanted to provide a way for students to take hold of their identity and define themselves as individuals in a large classroom setting. Oddly enough, the final solution focused more on allowing anonymity than blatant individuality.
This decision was deliberate, thoughtful and subtle. They proposed that allowing students to define their level of anonymity in a digital setting would help those students who feel uncomfortable speaking up to ask questions in class. Enter NASQ: Not A Stupid Question [dot] com. Their web application was designed to be accessible from a computer or mobile device and allowed students to post questions to their teacher, peers or both, and choose to remain anonymous to either of these groups.
It seems a simple solution, and while there were other limited features, the site basically encompasses what is outlined above. I loved the simplicity. We brainstormed for hours around the features that could be a part of the application. I was proud and impressed that my group chose to focus narrowly: solving the problem at hand rather than designing what may have ended up being a slightly better Blackboard.
In the end, a few of the judges didn’t share my opinion. The final day of Prototype Camp was punctuated by a panel of 14 designers, artists and educators providing critique on the projects the students presented. One of the judges argued that by putting this interaction online we were providing a wall for shy students to hide behind rather than building an environment in which they felt comfortable asking these questions in class. As a designer, I understood her point, and respected that she was challenging the students to defend their ideas. However, as a member of their team, I wanted nothing more than to jump up from my post at the back of the room, grab a microphone, and champion their cause.
Later that afternoon, as we gathered around a table eating ice cream at North Market, Chuck Palmer, another of the panelists came up and discussed their application. I was immensely appreciative that he took that step. I did not want their experience to end on a sour note, and he validated their solution and gave them the chance to defend their motivations.
It was an amazing conclusion to the week. High fives all around for Lauren, Mallory, Jason, Chandler, Camille, and all the other Prototype Campers. You did an amazing job.
I do not mean to give EPICurious more explanation than the other groups; however, to explain the countless innovative systems and prototypes that came out of the workshop would take more words than I have time to write. Suffice to say, if even half of the passion and innovation that these students showed was put into a redesign of educational institutions, schools would be a vastly different and exponentially more engaging place to learn.
I can not imagine a better experience to inspire me as a designer and learner. I am so proud of the thinking and passion that the students put into those three days. They showed more poise, empathy and critical thinking skills than I ever imagined. I have never considered teaching as a career path I could walk down. I never thought, and am still not particularly sure, that I have the patience and dedication for it. However, working alongside these students; seeing them grow as they collaborate to solve problems, was so enlightening and rewarding, who knows, maybe it is in my future.
I hope to be a part of this for years to come. A million thanks to Christian Long, Meredith Melragon, Be Playful, and all of the designers and contributors who made Prototype Camp a reality. I was so lucky to be a part of it.