This past year, Kristi, Niki and I spent time in a grant group called Creating Innovators. This group was based on the book by the same title by Dr. Tony Wagner, and was created to help us see the importance of innovation and begin the process of including opportunities to innovate in our classrooms. We started out looking at small ideas within our current classes as a project or activity within a unit. This small view continued until we actually began our book study, at which point our eyes were opened to a much bigger picture! Instead of looking at innovation as a unit within a class, what about a class where innovation was the entire purpose? This led to a lot of enthusiastic dialogue between us.
Our thoughts were that we could base an entire class on real-world problems that they could work on in teams to create potential solutions. We thought about having students present their ideas to others, and knew we needed a way to bring even more to the course. We are fortunate to not only have a university in our town, but one with a degree called a Bachelor of Innovation™ that has offered us the opportunity for a partnership. With the help of the BI department, we have decided that we need to include business principles as well as opportunities in science. Project and Problem Based Learning has been gaining attention and favor in the educational world as a way to make education more relevant. We believe the addition of entrepreneurial practices to the PBL process turns ideas into impact.
No comments:
Post a Comment