 As Sarah said, I'm Caroline Payson. I'm the director of education at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. And I'm delighted to welcome you all here to our design center. We have been in this space for, it was a year on Sunday, and have served 13,000 people, families, kids, teachers, and adults through their programming here. So we're delighted to add you to the mix. This is one of, we opened the space last May to house all of our education and outreach programs. As our main campus on 91st Street is undergoing renovation. We'll be reopening in 2014 with 60% more gallery space, better circulation for the public and back of house, and a whole new visitor experience. So we look forward to welcoming you there as well as here. We're very grateful to Target, who's sponsoring this space for us in this interim period. We're also really excited to have this event tonight with Rick Ekstrom and Don Miller, which is part of NYC by Design, New York City's inaugural week-long event celebrating design across all disciplines. We were at Cooper Hewitt. We're delighted to participate in this week, particularly because we wanted to help highlight the exciting and innovative work that so many people are doing in K through 12 education using design and design thinking. And we're delighted that this is to be able to offer the two K through 12 events that are happening in NYC by Design. There's this program for adults, and we did a takeover of PS3, where every class this week got a design education experience as part of our design in the classroom program. And we kind of took over the school this week, and the kids will be presenting all of the work that they've done on Friday. And we wanted to take this opportunity to kind of stop and reflect on the work that's being done with design and design thinking in both the formal and informal spaces for K through 12 kids. It seems to be a moment where so much of this stuff is coming together. So many amazing programs are being done. Some of them are overlapping. Some of them are people who are working together in really strong partnerships. And I think this is great to start a moment to sort of think about what everybody's doing so that we can learn from each other. And we were delighted to be able to convene this group. And we were also really delighted for all of the folks who came and participated in the poster session. What we tried to do tonight is come up with three examples to do a deeper dive, which will be sort of us talking about design and the informal design thinking in the classroom by outside providers in an informal way. We will be hearing from Nest and also the Institute of Play, which is working with Quest to Learn. But those are only three examples of some of the great work that's been doing. So I'd like to thank everybody for coming and participating in the poster session and talking to interested people. I'd like to introduce my co-panelists tonight and have you guys sit. Or will that be a go in front of the screen? Sarah, what do you think? OK, I will introduce you later. Sorry about that. I'm going to start then with a just brief presentation with Cooper Hewitt's definition of design and design thinking and how we apply that to classroom practice. It may not be exactly the same as our two panelists, but that's the fun of having a night like this. And because we have an audience, I think, of people who are new to design, I wanted to start with a little bit of discussion about what design is. And I want to start by sort of looking at some objects, things that are designed. At Cooper Hewitt it's our mission to sort of talk to people and think about design that goes beyond what we might immediately recognize, the design of a product like a car in outfit, like fashion, or a chair, or a house, and reflect on the idea that design is all around us, that even things like this is designed. And often, we don't notice that they're designed until they're designed badly. How many of you have had the experience where you're trying to push on the door, but the sign says pull because that's what the handle suggests, but you can't get in there, right? That's when we know that that's actually a design problem. And the key to our presentation and talk about design is that the way designers think and the way the designers solve problems in a creative way is super critical to the way that young people are learning. For example, we like to start with these two very simple problems being solved by design, right? One for what to do with your desk, and another probably the most ubiquitous design in schools across America, right? The wonderful use of cheap local products, the tennis balls, that have been designed for one thing, that have been repurposed in another to make the library quieter, cleaner, and more efficient. And that's solving a design problem. Another really important thing for us to think about when we talk about design and the design thinking experience is to think about the user, right? Design is different from art. Art is often about personal expression. And design, although there's plenty of room for creativity, is often about looking at that user and designing something that will be used. So even a fabulous design isn't so good if it's not being used by the person that's intended to do. And there are a wealth of skills that come into that kind of problem solving and thinking about the user. And I'm imagining our quest to learn, friends, my talk about that is a key part in not only developing design and critical thinking skills for young people, but also a key part of empathy, right? That ability to put yourself in someone else's spot, which is so important for kids. You know, the user's really important. You can ask any kid in the world who these chairs are designed for. They'll be able to tell you. If you want to get a group of third graders laughing, ask them what class would be like if they were all on the second chair. But another important thing that you can tease out in the design process is that the user, for example, in the chairs is not necessarily just the kid in the classroom, right? Those chairs are cheap, stackable, unbreakable, which might lead you to believe that the school itself or the school system is the client, not necessarily the kid who's uncomfortable. One of the things we try to stress when we talk about design thinking is breaking out beyond that. We could identify what those chairs were, but what would happen if you changed the chair in a school and let the kid stand? Or even better, what would happen if you created an outdoor landscape that allowed children to run through and do their math problems, right? These are all creative solutions to similar design problems. Another thing that's important is that idea of improvement, that design is inherently an optimistic venture. It's about looking at things that are out there that exist and thinking about a way to improve them. This is one of my favorite examples which is from our design for the other 90% exhibition. It's a solar-powered hearing aid that was designed by a woman who lives in Africa, and one of the important things about it was the story behind it, which was, this was a place where there was no shortage of hearing aids. They were being donated by the West. People were able to get them, but the batteries for them once they ran out were the equivalent of a year's salary. So the design problem then becomes more complicated, right? It's not enough just to solve someone's immediate problem, but thinking about the sustainability of any kind of long-term success became important. And also, thinking about, again, the user, what would it mean if you were given this that changed your life exponentially and suddenly it was no longer available to you, right? So part of her solution was to come up with solar-powered hearing aids. And I think it's really important to recognize that even an experience or some kind of system can be designed. Most of us are familiar with the Keep the Change program. That was an experience that IDEO designed when Bank of America came to them and said, we need something that will help us provide a program for single moms. And in their interviews and looking at their client, they learned that a lot of single moms have jars of change and then use that for other things. But one of the important things about design is that this not only solved that problem, but I myself am not a single mom. I have a change jar. I love this because I can put money in it and once a year on my birthday, I can buy something, right? So it's helping other people through that focus on one particular kind of group. This is another one of my favorite system design stories that I'm gonna linger over a little. Are you all familiar with this from Design That Matters in MIT? The problem that they were trying to solve here, like the hearing aids, was the fact that, as we all know, premature babies need incubators to be kept warm. And in societies where those aren't readily available, that becomes obviously a horrible situation where you're trying to keep these babies alive. And again, there was no shortage of things that were being donated for use. The problem was keeping those things running and working in countries where they were far, not only sort of electrical systems repairs, but everything about keeping that system going was impossible. So what they did is they used design thinking to think about other systems that got anywhere in the world, away from that exact project for a moment and thought about a system. So the system they thought about were, the things they knew got anywhere in the world no matter how rural or how poor or how wealthy were cigarettes, car parts, every small village has someone who can fix a motorcycle or fix a car. Coca-Cola is cold every place you try to get it. And they tried to see how those systems, so what they set themselves out to do was the task, and again, this is another great example of design thinking, you know, design is about defining limitations. They set themselves the task of designing an incubator out of car and refrigerator parts. And what that enabled was not only the incubator to be made and working, but it set up a system where they already had people locally who could fix it. So these are great stories to tell kids, great examples again of how a certain kind of thinking can allow you to sort of really think outside the box. And it's also, I think, important to recognize that even big problems like getting water in certain parts of the world can have very simple solutions. This is the que drum that can change exponentially the life of a woman who spends most of her day bringing water from one place to another. Changes her life if a kid can get it easily. One more example, this happens to be one of my favorite objects from the Cooper Hewitt selection. These are the ad specs. Again, I'm focusing on things that are about systems and I also want to stress this idea that, you know, none of, you know, we tend to think of design as incredibly beautiful, often expensive things. And if we think of it more broadly, to be about systems and things that aren't necessarily the most beautiful things, but are functioning at incredible levels, that's, I think, a really important thing to get across. So this, again, like the hearing aid and the incubator is about how you get prescription lenses to people all over the world. And one of the most obviously most difficult obstacles would be that idea of how do you test them? So what ad specs does is take away the eye doctor. These are adaptive eyewear that uses the principle how many of you have ever put a drop of water on a bug when you were little to see it magnify. This uses that principle. So at the sides of these glasses are liquid that sort of funnels into the lenses and the user can adjust them. So it means you've given someone the same pair of glasses that they can use for the rest of their lives and they can self adjust. They don't have bifocals yet, but I'm sure they will. So all of these things were designed by the same process that in on my computer actually that lines up to the dots. And this is how we define design thinking. And I'm sure other people have others, which is. That was like a design thing. Yeah, I should say yes. Yes it was. So all of these had a process in common which was to define the problem, to brainstorm ideas, to try some of those ideas we often call that prototyping, to ask questions and test through things and ultimately to get to that final solution after you've gotten input and information. And I think that you can see from that map that's the same process, whether you're designing a toothbrush or a car. You can apply that process to an English paper and it maps incredibly closely to scientific methods. So the other thing I think that we're very interested in is that idea of mapping the skill to the curriculum. And why would you do it in a classroom? We all know that although design has a major impact on the quality of our life and design decisions such as environmental ones that we make every day, our innate capacity, because we know everybody is capable of this to do this, is not fostered in a traditional school's curriculum. We've got some great examples of people who are going beyond that, but it's not something that's traditionally out there. And that focus is not obviously about the end product, but is about mapping that process to the work that's being done in schools. And that's critical thinking. Multiple ways of solving a problem, being able to communicate your ideas, being able to work in a team. Designers most often are working in teams of people to collaboratively solve a problem. And maps of course against skills of innovation and invention. This is something that for those of you familiar with 21st century skills, this maps very concretely against those. It also for those of you who are working with Common Core, clearly maps against those skills as well. I'm gonna show you a couple of projects that we've done with teachers to put design in a classroom. We do a lot of professional development where we train teachers from around the country and make them math, science, language, arts, teachers K through 12. And we make them kind of go through design thinking boot camp and then they go back and integrate this work in their classrooms. And these are some results. We worked with Ed Couch Elsa, which is a small town in Texas. And the students identified the red barn chemical site and abandoned site that had been a chemical factory or toxic site and they did a range of things. The first thing they did when their science classes was get soil samples and send them to the EPA to determine what could be there, what could live there, what couldn't live there, what they should build. So they use this across curriculum, made prototypes of the system that they thought would, you know, a park design in some cases or other kinds of designs that they should go in the site and presented it in front of their whole community. 300 people came one night to watch the work of these high school kids. And we had a barbecue because it's Texas and I think that's the law. We also have done a lot of work in New Orleans where again, we've trained K through 12 teachers. What we've done there because we've worked with so many teachers is we've held design fairs where the kids have thought about redesigning their bus system or redesigning a library that was destroyed in Katrina or some other part of that experience. And they presented them together with the people who were designing in New Orleans. This is one of my favorites. We worked with St. Bernard Parish and this is actually a carport roof. And this is how much had been flooded during Katrina. They actually used it as a dock, tied their boats to it and broke through the second floor window where a thousand people lived there as a shelter of last resort for four days until the Mounties found them. So the kids returned to this. So working with us and local designers, the high school kids here redesigned their courtyard. But it's really important to note that they not only physically designed it and looked at local landscaping and indigenous plants and all of the things that would keep that going but they also redesigned the drainage systems. We did another project where the kids looked at New Orleans maps and looked at redesigning levees. So there's a great way of like rethinking the problem from their own perspectives and the perspective of their peers. My final example of a classroom because I think we need to think about all, you know, one of the things that I wanna be really clear about is that this is accessible to all students. And often it's a great way of connecting to students who might not have a lot of these resources in their classrooms as is or might not have a lot of resources for particularly creative, you know, interventions into their classes. We trained the teachers who taught in the high school in the New Orleans Parish Women's Prison. In Louisiana, you can, you're tried as an adult if you're 14 and you have to go to high school till you're 18. So they actually have a rather large high school program. For the teachers in the room, the woman who runs this program chose not to teach gifted kids and chose to teach in the prison because she didn't have to worry about attendance or behavior and could focus on teaching. And what they did is this is the space they had for their high school classes, which as you can see isn't the most welcoming space. And they decided to design it with the materials they had and the problem they wanted to solve was to focus on sadly many of them at that point in their lives 80% of the women in these high school classes were mothers. And they really focused on themselves and their kids as the client and had determined that what they wanted to do was create in their school a place that would teach them to be better mothers when they went out. So a lot of that emphasis became on the walk through to the hallway to the classroom being about a better experience and enlightening experience. If you can see on the walls right there they hand sewed 80 little curtains because on that walkway you look out and all you see are the cells on either side of you and they wanted to make it a transformative experience. They had articulated that as being super important to them. That ground with the bricks is actually painted. They created a learning space that went through children's literature so that they would familiarize themselves with the books that they were not read to as kids so that they would read them to their own children. And in fact created a mural where they filmed themselves reading children's books and the murals were designed so that the kids would not know where their moms were when they were being read to, right? So think about that's a totally client driven amazingly successful intervention completely thought out by these students who probably it's safe to say had not had the best access to education before this and they completely mapped against it were very enthused by it. And in fact one of the people in the class got hired by the school, by the prison after she got released to run the program. They also were the only prison library in the country to get a Laura Bush reading library grants. And in fact got double the books because you can't use hardcover books in prisons. So they got a great opportunity to do that. Briefly I just wanna talk about the impact of some of these things. In our high school programs we have 65% of the kids who've been exposed to design activities have reported an increase in design careers. 40% have reported an interest in looking at design related schools. 80% of them have said that being exposed to design has had a positive impact in their lives. 75% of them have enrolled in additional elective courses when available to them and their time spent out of school on design related activities has doubled. In our high school program and our scholars program we've had 100% college acceptance rate for the kids who are working on that program but I also wanna stress that of course the work that we do with teachers has gone across the all grade levels. We've also been doing some work in looking at evaluating our programs and the success in the classroom. And one of the things that we've learned is that the teachers who've been using design in the classroom have reported that their kids are more engaged in active learners that their writing skills have improved that their problem solving skills have improved. You can read this, their presentation skills, their ability to be collaborative. And in the programs where we looked at the school as a vehicle for civic engagement and use design as a vehicle for that that we were able to document increased volunteerism in both school and out of school activities. We also tried to do a more in-depth design intervention in Ed Couch Elsa where we trained the math, science, language arts and social studies teacher in this group of students. This is a community where 90% of people live below the poverty line for a family of four. Over 90% speak a language other than English at home and in a school where just about 100% of the kids qualify for free and reduced meals. And after a year after working with those teachers in all age groups and having them use design thinking as their vehicle for curriculum, those kids scored 52 points better on the standardized Texas reading test and 38 points better on the math tests. Many of you might be familiar with Meredith Davis's book, Design as a Catalyst for Learning. And this is probably one of the only studies done since then that has directly looked at the impact of design and design intervention on standardized tests. Briefly, what I wanna talk about what Cooper Hewitt can do for you in New York. I've talked about stuff we've done at other places. We run a program I mentioned called Design in the Classroom where we go in and do a 45 minute design activity sponsored by Target. It's free for New York City public school kids. And we go in with the problem solving focus. There's a 45 minute presentation. We have a paper bag with some prototyping materials and at the bottom of every bag is a challenge and the kids have to work together to solve it. Last year, we served over 16,000 kids in 183 schools. This year we're on track to reach 19,000. This is a free program. We would be delighted to go to any of the schools that are represented here or certainly if there are any parents here who would love to suggest it. We are completely booked up for this school year. But get to us in August or September, we'll make sure that you're first on the list. And we've been all over the place. Is this the clip? Oh, okay. We also have on our website an Educator Resource Center where we have 400 lesson plans that have been written by teachers. And these are math science language art across curriculum and for all grade levels. And they're designed to be starting activities for teachers across the country who want to put design in the classroom. What we do with our design in the classroom program is help teachers map that introductory experience to the range of activities that they have afterwards. We're super excited that we will be able this summer to take design in the classroom national. So this program that we've been doing in New York City schools, we're morphing into a larger model where we will be training teachers to do it in their classroom. And we're bringing it to New Orleans, San Antonio and Washington DC as well as New York. So there may be, if New York teachers are interested in participating that would be great. So that's just an overview of what we're doing. Sometimes in the formal education space with professional development, sometimes in a slightly less formal way, but still in classrooms. And I know that there are two other guests who are doing some very interesting things as well. Let me introduce you guys and bring you up. Don Miller is the learning designer at Institute of Play where he's responsible for leading curriculum development teams. It quest to learn working with teachers and game designers. He also serves as the director of Play Power, a nonprofit organization that brings low cost learning games to developing countries. And he was recently, is a recent teaching resident at Ibeam Art and Technology Center's digital day camp. I'll also introduce Rick now, but he'll come up after, how about you, might as well peek in. Rick is the principal and design director at, how do you pronounce it? Area, a research and design practice. Rick's been a builder and teacher with over 25 years of experience and over 100 built projects in the United States and abroad. And he's also an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts Bachelor of Arts program for interior design. So Don and then Rick will speak and then we'll, I think very quickly, I might ask a question or two, but then we'll throw it out to you because I think you all have a lot of questions. I'm also wondering if we might want to briefly turn on the AC because I see some people wilting. And then, yeah. Next. I guess. I guess we're just gonna get started. Hopefully you can hear me over there conditioning. Yeah, I'm from the Institute of Play. My name is Don Miller and I'm gonna talk a little bit about what we do, specifically at a school called Quest to Learn in Chelsea. So Quest to Learn is a school in short that uses games and game-like learning as kind of the center of a lot around what we do. And as we heard, we also think a lot about 21st century skills and design thinking. And we do it in a kind of unique way. That's a bit complex. I'm gonna try to break it down and talk about what we do, why we do it and show you some pictures and some examples. So this is a shot of a classroom at Quest to Learn and here students are playing a game. And one common misconception is that at Quest to Learn, the students are always playing digital games. And I think that is something we should definitely get out right away. And as you can see here, this is a game that is made up of cardboard and markers and paper. So, and this is the final version of a game that was designed in-house at the school. So another thing you notice here is that the teacher is seated with the students and there's also students and other groups playing games at other stations. So games are one thing that we use in school as a teaching tool. And the games are designed by a team of people. We'll talk about that in a moment, but led by game designers that work in an office in the school called Mission Lab. And this is another type of game we play. This is a digital game. This is a small lab that we have here at Quest to Learn in New York. And this allows for a kind of embodied learning to take place in a classroom. This is a large mat. There's a projector in the ceiling and it's projected down here on the floor. And students here are playing a game, learning about angles. And these markers that the students have, that they're hands near, are markers that help track a game. And it's an interactive game that takes place on the floor, allows students to kind of actually kind of get into the learning and get a little bit more physical and with an embodied activity. That is largely digital. And this is some students interacting with mobile devices in a camp that we offer in the summer called Mobile Quest. And Mobile Quest is always kind of strange when we talk about it because they say, oh, it's a mobile game design camp. And people might think, oh, like Angry Birds, but no, it's actually a mobile game design camp where students are designing mobile games that are location based. So here in Mobile Quest, it's largely been a sixth grade induction activity into Quest to Learn. So as we have new students coming in from fifth to sixth grade, they get a chance for a couple of weeks before school starts, well, one week before school starts to meet teachers and each other. And they learn a lot about what we do at Quest to Learn, as well as how to design games and get some of that vocabulary. So they're ready when the school year begins. And it's exciting, it's outdoors, and the students usually take away a lot from it. So I thought there's one, there's just to be one more picture here, but as you can just imagine, three adult men sitting around a table looking, staring intently at paper. That is, that about sums up not all men, but all adults, that sums up the kind of meetings that we have at school between people of three roles. So I work as a learning designer. It's mostly working with pushing forward curriculum in some areas as well as technology integration. We also have game designers employed by the Institute of Play. And those make up two thirds of the team. And the other third of the team that we push forward most of the curriculum with at the school are the actual DOE teachers. So Quest to Learn, again, is a school in Chelsea. It's a public school. And, but at the Institute of Play, we partner with them and we have an office there. So game designers, learning designers work with the teachers to kind of push the curriculum forward. I'll show a video in a moment, which explains that in better detail. But the idea is that we know that traditional learning doesn't always reach all students. And we want to strive to reach more students with activities and new types of learning, but it's a lot of work. And it takes more than teachers work for a long time. I mean, most teachers get up very early in the morning and get to school before it begins and stay much later after the school closes. And that's just for normal teachers in a kind of traditional K through 12 classroom school. If we want teachers to work and integrate games and game-like learning and all types of other experiences that we push, it takes more than just the teacher. So curriculum designers work, or learning designers, curriculum designers work with game designers to kind of sculpt how things go in the school. But we don't just work at Institute of Play at the school. And that, again, is Mission Lab here. Mission Lab is where we kind of focus, again, in a coordinated way to support teachers. Like I said, the teachers that are already working long hours trying to help students, we support them. We're also there supporting the kids to make sure they get in the best education they can. In addition to that, we also have ABLE on the other side there, which is really everything outside of school, right? So the informal learning space. Spaces that may happen after school, but aren't part of the formalized education they get during the day. Or things that students, learning that happens at home. And then lastly, here in the middle, we have Glass Lab. Glass Lab is kind of a new way of looking at assessment through digital games. So SimCity EDU was really the first kind of excursion, Glass Lab, and it partnered here. We partnered here with EA for that. What we're really looking at is games that students already play, like SimCity, that offer a ton of data to track what students are learning. But that data isn't really used, except to kind of level you up, get you more resources, and just kind of stays in the game. So Glass Lab is really looking at transforming assessment and saying, okay, well, we have a game that's very feature-rich. It delivers a lot of data. How do we take that data and map it to standards, and then deliver that data to the teachers? So again, these are kind of the three branches, the Institute of Play, Mission Lab. We're gonna see a video about that in a moment that explains better maybe than I did some of these things. And thankfully, I'm not in it, so I don't have to stand here and watch myself talk on the screen. Let's make sure. All right, so it sounds like the audio is working. And again, this will give a little better insight here. Then develop the curriculum and to design the game. Design Studio within Quest to Learn. It's comprised of game designers and curriculum designers, and we work with teachers at Quest to Learn to help them develop the curriculum and to design games that are played in the classroom. Teachers working together are three curriculum designers or three game designers. The teacher obviously comes with the content expertise in terms of what is mandated to be taught and developers and game developers. The content. It's not like a fact. But then the teacher comes up with something else, which is very close to that. So they say, oh, actually, I was thinking the same. So when I see that connection happening, like we are almost on the same wavelength, then I see, oh, we should at least try to prototype this idea and see what happens. When the collaboration works, it's more successful in the classroom because the teacher feels ownership over it. You see kids excited. They're jumping out of their seats. They're yelling. They're talking about triangles and Pythagorean theorem. And you can just see the energy in the classroom. I call it controlled chaos. It is a lot of noise, but very specific noise geared towards learning goals. So it's this amazing time in a classroom where you know learning is going on at the same time that the students are having fun. We're not just playing the games for no reason. We have like a goal in mind. So our goal for the day may be to learn like certain Spanish words. So like we played Clue once, but it was a Spanish Clue. And the object was to learn how to say different Spanish foods. So by playing the game, we were able to pick up the language and speak it by the end of the class. At first you're like, oh man, the second these kids hear game, their minds change and they start to, you know, get a little excited. They talk, they don't listen as much. And that's true. And from a kid's perspective, every time they've experienced games, it's been in a more lax environment where, you know, they're supposed to have fun. They're not worrying about rules or anything else. So as a teacher, it's your job to present the game in such a way that, yeah, we're having fun. We're learning, but at the same time, although you're enjoying this game, you're still in a classroom. And the ultimate goal is not only to have fun, but to learn what we're trying to teach you. One of the things that gives games so much power in teaching kids is that games really encourage you to just keep trying. This seems like a perfect fit with a safe environment. Mm. Without fear. Mm. As. Mm. Never thought of. And so it changes the direction of where we're going in a particular brainstorm or with a play chest of a game, the teachers of the redesign of that game. One block, you need to touch that with one of your units or variables. So if it's touching them, you can touch and you can use that. Mission Lab is a, in our meeting times, our prompts for teacher learning and teacher reflecting on their next steps and their long-term planning. It's very easy to get caught in the day-to-day as a teacher and planning for the next day or maybe the next week or maybe two weeks down the road, but we try to force the long-term vision and while it can be a pain sometimes too, teachers do appreciate it in the long run. They're sort of a trajectory to understanding the nature of the collaboration. And so teachers who have been here since the beginning are very protective of their relationship with the curriculum team. Curriculum meeting times are kind of like times that are never touched unless they really have to be in teachers that protect that more than anybody else does. Games can be considered almost like a second language, universal language of the world because those are experiences that a lot of people go through and they connect to maybe in similar ways. And so there is already some kind of connection there. So if something is working here, I don't see why something like this wouldn't work in other places. It's here too. If you want to contact her, you can write to Elena at insta-to-play.org. Thank you very much. How's everybody doing? Do we need air again? Are you dying back there? Great, great. I will try to keep you as short a time as I can. But first, there are a few people that I want to thank who've been involved with the Green Lab project and will continue to be involved in the Green Lab story. But I want to thank the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum for hosting this event tonight and for inviting us all to participate and partnering for this really interesting discussion. I want to extend my thanks to the Nest Plus M Green Lab Executive Committee and their partners, New York Sunworks, for including us in this project. I want to thank the School of Visual Arts who have really done a great deal to make this show happen, offered a lot of support. And then finally, I want to thank our design team, which includes Derek Borowski, Chae Rim Shin, and our partners at Arup, the engineering firm, and Calliper Studio. So, yes, you've heard, I'm a principal and founder of a research and design firm called ARIA here in New York. But I'm also the father of a fifth grade student at Nest Plus M. And as such, I have a greater interest, perhaps in this project, as merely any other kind of client. I'm gonna tell you the brief story of the Green Lab and perhaps it's more like the first chapter or even the prologue to the story because this story has a ways to go and what's exciting is that you all are in on the ground floor and can watch this story develop over the next couple of years as this project becomes a reality. But the subject of this conversation is really about how design becomes an instrument for learning. We've heard about some really interesting, innovative design applications in these two previous talks. The process that we're gonna go through now is a bit more traditional, I suppose, but I hope to show how our process in developing this concept has been and will continue to be an exciting, continuous learning experience. Design is about learning and I think that one of the reasons that it's a successful application within a learning environment is because everything about design is about investigation and learning. First, let me give you a little introduction to Nest. So Nest, plus M, is a K through 12 gifted and talented school in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Hosts of a very diverse population and students from families that come from all around the world. It was founded in 2001 to launch new explorations into science, technology, and math. But a little over 10 years later, those explorations are being launched really with last century's resources. And if you go to the Nest plus M website, you see this guy, John James Audubon and this quote is prominent on the page. And to me, I believe this quote conveys Nest plus M's world view that knowledge begins with an understanding and deep interest in the natural world. A little while back, a group of parents at Nest began talking about how the overstretched and outdated facilities might be improved through some kind of curricular or programmatic intervention. This was their problem to solve. It was then that Michelle Luhann Nordberg, who's here tonight, one of our fearless leaders, took her family to visit the Science Barge at that point, parked in the Harlem River in Yonkers. And Michelle and her family were really impressed by the way hydroponics and aquaculture, sustainable and renewable energy sources were being used and how hands-on learning and experimentation was really on display. This visit led them to another project by New York Sunworks, PS333, the Manhattan School for Children on the Upper West Side. Where they met, among other people, Cecil Robards, who's here also tonight. And this discussion with New York Sunworks began and the plan began to take hold. New York Sunworks has been creating greenhouse projects around the city, the count is getting close to 20 now, where they're introducing students to the natural world but through technology. Technology science in the environment and they're connecting STEM learning to social studies to the arts and ultimately to sustainability. Well, the Nest parents thought this is a great idea. How can we do this ourselves? So this is where we came in. We were asked to do a feasibility study last summer. It is something like this, even feasible at Nest. What would it look like? How much would it cost? Why would we do it in the first place? So this is a, to give you a little context, here's where Nest is located. It's in this beautiful 1959 international style building that's raised up on Pilote off the ground and is focused around this really wonderful courtyard in the middle. Now, we looked at the site and thinking, of course, where do you wanna put a greenhouse? You wanna put it oriented to the south and it made much more sense to put this thing on the ground because that's where things get built. They get built on the ground and we looked on the ground. We looked hard on the ground but every site that we proposed for a greenhouse, we ran into one problem after another and ultimately it just, it wasn't working and this was not good. So we thought, well, let's look elsewhere. So we did a series of studies where we, through computer modeling, we looked at the site and engaged in different ways. Of course, we needed to have an optimal growing environment because we actually wanted to grow things in this space but we also wanted to allow for multiple kinds of growing technologies. We wanted to be able to innovate. We wanted the students to be able to innovate and we wanted to be able to accommodate new kinds of technologies as they came online. There are lots of different ways to learn and these are all photos from New York Sunworks projects really incorporating a lot of different kinds of technology and learning tools within this environment. But we also wanted this to be, if possible, a net zero structure and part of the learning process is how do we create a more sustainable world or what we could show that in this building, if the building could generate its own energy and take all of its waste and put it back into the building as food for power and for heat. And then finally, it was important to us that the building have an iconic form that this, you know, to be fit the mission of Nest Plus M and the promise of Nest Plus M that this building should be a kind of beacon to the neighborhood and to the world that really cool stuff is happening here. So we spent a good deal of time doing a number of studies where we looked at fairly traditional kinds of greenhouses and we worked with greenhouse experts and we talked to lots of different people and we learned things that completely dashed our preconceptions about how you would do this. We originally thought that you would want the long wall of a greenhouse oriented south. Well, you know, the engineers and the greenhouse folks said that that actually was not the case. You wanna have the building oriented the other way as it is here so that you get the eastern sun in the morning and the western sun in the afternoon. That midday sun in the summer is the most harmful thing for plants. But we looked at this thing in terms of the structural capabilities of Nest Roof, of access to the building, required setbacks, all of that stuff. Did some model studies. This is what it might look like. This is a rendering taken from, we envisioned from across Houston Street looking south. This is what this thing might look like on the roof. And then we realized actually in programming studies that we were doing for the building, this wasn't even big enough. That we needed to bring more students into the space. So that gave us another addition here that finally met the spatial requirements that we felt that we had. But the more we looked at these images, the more we looked at this design, the more we looked at the problems that we were coming up against in terms of all of those optimal conditions that we set out to meet in our goals. This became less and less really exciting to us. So we decided to shift gears a little bit and go back to nature. And surely there is a model, there is a path that nature has set that we can learn from in this process. So we were very interested in efficiency. We wanted this building to be as inexpensive as possible, as flexible as possible, and as efficient in terms of the use of materials as possible. So one of the concepts in nature that we found really intriguing was this idea of phylo-taxis, which is this incredibly efficient, close packing of in this case, the florets of the sunflower in order to get the most sun and the most nutrients to the plant. This is natural design. And this spiral whirling structure became the touchstone for our next steps in thinking about the structure. And we thought, well, what if we extruded that, that phylo-taxic world form and created a domic structure based on that same idea? Now this led us to solve the structural problem. This led us to this idea of a grid shell. This very lightweight building where the loads are very evenly distributed across the structure. This form also allows us to accommodate the most amount of floor area and the least amount of surface area. Hugely efficient. And also provides the kind of exposure to natural light all year round. There are no biased corners, there are no sides, there are no edges, there are no obstructions really that would get in the way a more traditional structure might. Next we looked at the materials and really questioned the use of glass in greenhouses or even polycarbonates which are used a lot. And again, in trying to come up with a lightweight really super working material, we went to this material called ETFE which is a polymer that is incredibly thin, incredibly strong and very lightweight. It provides the kind of light transference that is much better than glass. But also if you create a pillow out of it, it creates an insulating value for the building which is much better than glass. So you keep building warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. So here was our new idea and right away you can see that there's something more compelling about this, this is something that you can get excited about. And we tested it in all the same ways that we tested the other models. And in terms of our design goals, this project solved all of our problems. This concept solved all of our problems. Now we now have to prove the concept. But we're able to, in this design, meet the requirements that we set out to meet. Here's a rendering of the grid shell structure on the roof. 2,500 square feet of floor space, about 25 feet tall. This is the view from, that same view from across House and Street. Now, our heuristic trial and error research-based process will continue with the students and teachers who will be using this building. Architects like to say that every active design is really a condensed liberal arts education. But in this case, the learning and innovation continues through the use of the building. This facility really becomes an instrument for learning. The renowned environmental science writer, David Orr, I saw speak last summer at a conference and he said architecture is pedagogy. And that's really stuck with me. The Green Lab will hopefully serve as the launching pad for many new explorations well into the 20th century. Thank you. I'm gonna start us off with a couple of questions, but I really wanna turn it over to the audience. And in fact, some of you guys might also have answers to some of these questions. So if you do, you're welcome to share. The first thing I thought about was just to get your thoughts on this idea that there's so many things happening around using design thinking, integrating it across the board. Why do you think this is a moment where a lot of this is happening? Do you think that's need-driven? It's resources-driven. It's the stars in the line in a certain way. But what would you say is one of the reasons why this is becoming so prevalent now? Well, I don't know. I'd like to think in education it's definitely need-driven. I think when you were talking about the design process in your introduction, you were saying starting from a problem and you were talking about starting from a goal. But I think in education it's a little bit of both. So we have a goal. We wanna prepare students for life after school. And we have a problem in that traditional schooling isn't preparing students for life. So I mean, we have to think about a way we can tackle that problem and that's gonna be thinking about new ways. And yeah, and I think going with the design process is a natural way of attacking that problem if traditional means aren't proving necessary. Yeah, I agree. I also think that the design process has, people have been aware of this process forever, but not seen it as applicable to other problems. And I've been involved in business school symposia that where business schools are looking to bring iterative design problem solving to the business school model. I, there's this wonderful program called the, I'm not sure if it's still around. I hope it is called the Mayor's Institute for City Design. And the whole thesis is to, is that mayors of cities are making design decisions every single day and they don't realize it. So this institute, this conference brings mayors of cities into the room for a week with a bunch of designers. And the mayors are taught to, number one, realize that a lot of what they're doing is design thinking, but also apply it a little bit more, perhaps successfully once they go back to their school. So I think that the only other anecdote that this seems to fit is that I was involved in a survey on one of our clients a few years ago. We were asked to survey business leaders from around the country about what they were looking for in graduating students. What was wrong with the American job hunter? And it was really interesting. And most of you know the results of that survey because it's been talked a lot about, but this idea of communication, of lack of leadership skills, of being very technically adept, but socially inept. We talked about how the design process of working in groups, of thinking through things iteratively and based on research, could really drive an improvement in the performance of these folks. I think one of the things that interests me about design thinking, and we've been talking about how we could map against curriculum and classroom experiences, but I'm also reminded of a, Daniel Pink came and spoke here a couple of years ago to a group of teachers and talked about the need to get across, to teach people, not to young people, not just the idea of the subject knowledge, but habits of mind which are developed perhaps through iteration and learning to fail and learning from failure to succeed and also habits of heart to sort of, not only sort of get yourself that idea of being able to feel that failure and be able to move on from it and not shut down in addition to learning from it. And I'm wondering if you guys can sort of elaborate on that based on the work that you're doing in your schools and how that might be fostered as well as curriculum. Yeah, I thought that was like a staged question and actually as well. We have these big posters I see around the school all the time that say failure is reframed as iteration and the students probably might see that and not even understand it or might not notice it as they push one another into it as they walk down the halls, but in the classroom this is very evident, right? So one way, we talk about all the time that you can kind of have that change of mind but also the kind of change of heart you spoke about is through games, right? And that's why we look at games. So of course you can say to a student who failed a test, oh, don't worry, you can try that test again and maybe next time you'll do better. Well, that's iteration, but games are one way that students can quickly iterate and kind of level up on their skills and that fear of failure is diminished but at the same time there's that kind of carrot, there's that incentive to keep trying and that's one of the many reasons that we use games at Quest to learn is because it allows students to kind of quickly understand how iteration works, which then we can take, pull that kind of skill out and use it when we have projects that the students are working on if we want them to say, okay, that's a great idea. Now, after you've done brainstorming, let's take it to a paper prototype and then move on and they understand that everything is a multi-step process but again, not being scared is that next step and that's where games really work out well for us. Yeah, I'm not sure what I can add to that other than I think that failure is, our culture's relationship with failure has been one thing for so long that investing a different kind of approach, a different kind of thinking to what it really means for something not to go well and what that means for the next attempt and the fact that there is this path forward. We're this very quantitatively based, performance based society that doesn't look well upon failure and there's a, I think all of these initiatives all of this work is really helpful in terms of starting to turn that thinking around. Okay, that's one more question then turning out to the group. Obviously, we're all preaching a little to the converted on this part of the room. We're proselytizing, we're about design thinking. We totally, obviously know where it's working or going out and doing this but there are some challenges. I know for us with the work that we do, we present design thinking in the classroom as an additional tool for a teacher's toolbox that it doesn't necessarily replace the work that they're doing but it's a way of kind of breaking down skills and allowing them new ways of approaching problems or new ways of sort of thinking about engaging kids. You guys are both working in schools where it's a more formal integration throughout the whole context and you touched on it, Dawn, I think a little bit when you talked about working with teachers and being able to help them be prepared for teaching in this new way. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about in both of your cases because you're both doing extraordinarily different and sort of path-breaking work in your schools. What's the impact on teachers have been trained in a traditional way? What are some of those challenges? Whether it's on the teacher level, on the administrator level, or the DOE level. I guess it's me again. We're just starting with you all the time. All right, I'll let you know that now. I think the biggest thing which I might have touched on earlier is time. It actually takes a lot of time and after time is work, right? And those are the two things. I mean, it sounds really simple but I think that's the hardest part and I know just speaking about preaching or the converted is that, well, we put in the time, we put in the work and then we can analyze results, right? We can still see if students are learning, they're taking the same regents exams that other students are taking and if we see that things are working, then we know what we're doing is successful but at the same time, there's other things that are harder to measure like the school community and the way students kind of approach what we do now is really quite amazing where we are play testing, we play test games often with students before they make it to the classroom in a multi-step process and usually have a small kind of like focus group of students that we come and just one anecdote to share is the other day we were sharing a game and this is one of the first play tests I've seen with a small group of sixth graders and we're in there, we're showing them the game and then like after five minutes, the kids are like, oh yeah, I get this, you know, I think I know a mod that could make this better and it's around like, oh please enlighten us on how we could improve this and it was actually a pretty good idea and that is gonna be reflected then when we roll that game out initially, we're gonna do one round of the way we thought, one round of the way she thought and then, you know, kind of tally the points from there so it's nice to see that not only are we kind of teaching students things that are that are helping them learn but it's kind of transforming the way they think so it's reflected back at us and then yeah, I mean when you see the video and you hear me speak and we have the pretty slides, I mean it seems like something that's this kind of utopia and of course there are problems, there are struggles and like I said, it's a lot of work, we have traditional teachers coming in, we have to work with them to say, you know, this is the way things go but honestly, you know, after a little bit of work and they see the difference in the students, most teachers that want to work this way and as I think Shula mentioned in the video, there's that protected time where the teachers really do value our work with them and it's definitely the most, you know, it's the most, it's what I'm most interested in and finally I should say that we have, you know, year by year attracted a larger number of students with special needs from across the spectrum and some people are surprised to say that, they're like, oh well your school probably works just because you have like really great kids but in fact we have been able, very successful with reaching students with a range of learning abilities and disabilities in some ways just because we're not looking at everything from a top-down approach but kind of approaching it from different angles. Yeah, I'd say that, you know, my experience is a bit more peripheral and that I'm not actively involved with K through 12 kids on a daily basis but I can say that, you know, our, as this Green Lab project has been introduced to people in the NEST plus M community, some of the strongest, you know, most pointed good and bad commentary has been from students. Students who have seen our drawings and our presentations are really intrigued about what's possible in a space like this and about the different, very non-traditional things that could happen that maybe this doesn't really look like learning so maybe it's fun. I think that, yeah, I mean, I think that if we can create the kind of environment that fosters exploration and trial and error and slowly integrate this idea that research could actually be cool and lead to a better solution than I think we've really done something. I'm gonna turn it over to the audience. There's a microphone, so, and please speak into it. I know this isn't the largest space but there are people watching and we're recording for our website too so it would be great if you could speak into the mic. Hi, thanks to all of you. I'm Judy Deers. I'm a mother of a, adults have designed that game. It is so, you know, 10 minutes ago. So I'm wondering about more engaging children from the very beginning in the design process and I'm also wondering about how to integrate children into, I mean, UNICEF has innovation labs all around the world where we're bringing young people together to look at disaster risk reduction in their communities, coming up with solutions and they're connected to one another around the world. So Bangladesh learns from Zambia about a floating school that they designed. So all the possibility of connecting New York City kids to this larger innovation around the world and learning from other kids and it's not just about giving to those poor kids in Africa but learning about the solutions that they had that could have helped us with the floods in, you know, this past year. So I'm wondering if we could imagine about a more global learning around innovation and really spur that sort of collaboration internationally. Yeah, Charles Dickens said, you should design your cities for your children. And I think that when you really think about that, it's really true and when we look at the most successful solutions to tricky problems, they tend to come from these places that we wouldn't normally go to. Yeah, I mean, I think that I completely agree and that the more that we can integrate kids into this process and bring them into the process, even as we're developing this particular project, the better the project will be. And one of the main goals, of course, is that within this environment, children, students feel free to create things within their own context. That this isn't a bunch of white, lab-coded, hard surfaces that looks like a very adult world. This is a working and playing and learning space. On a very pragmatic level, I wanna thank you for your comments and also remind everyone in this room that so many of us are working in this space and are looking for collaborations and partners. And certainly the Failure Fair and the ability to connect to the work that UNICEF is doing could probably have a range of possibilities in a lot of the work that we're doing. So thank you for that. Do you have another question? Do we have to turn on the AC really high so that we can go? This is a question for the Institute of Play. I was just wondering if you make those games available to the public or to other schools or it seems like that's the kind of thing that would be easy to sort of spread the word. That's a great and common question for sure. And just recently in Mission Lab again inside, inside question learned, the games we use in the class. So yeah, I'm not sure what the timeline is for getting most of the games out there, but I mean, we're looking at different strategies and one thing we're looking at specifically is kind of training, right? Because that's even more valuable than just getting games out there is how we can train teachers what we do so they can go back and do that in their schools as well. So I'm sorry I don't have more information about that right now. Hi, this is for Institute for Learning question. I was just curious how it evolved. Did you have the idea and approach the school or how did that collaboration come together? I think Elena, I think I should hand this one over to the communications manager. Elena. Hi everybody, I'm the communications manager for Institute of Play. So basically we were approached by the MacArthur Foundation to develop a school that would take advantage of all the advances in digital media and learning. So the MacArthur Foundation. Writing workshop, we stressed that it's super easy to pick out what doesn't work. And the really hard part is actually identifying what works and figuring out how to do more of it. And that's another thing to map against that. Lots and lots of failure. And we never see that part of it. At the beginning of the, in the first act there's a problem defined. The second act, we're working like crazy to solve it and the third act, boom, it's done. We're awesome, we figured it out and it doesn't work that way. One last question. Hi, I'm Sean. I'm actually one of the presenters here and to follow up on this idea of assessment. This is actually for the entire panel, maybe in two parts. With regards to gaming and game learning, you mentioned something earlier in your presentation about the sort of data rich content that let's say that's a game like SimCity has that one's able to go back in and see exactly what the gamer or user is actually engaging in how that might be tweaked a bit, let's say, to actually enhance the learning process or actually the method of playing the game. So I'm wondering in some of the work that you do, do you guys at all back end code the games so that you're able to go back in? And before you answer that, along to Caroline's comment about assessment with regards to design, one of the things that I know and I guess I've sort of come up against it myself is that in the notion of introducing design as a learning medium, the question from the naysayers is always, how do we evaluate that? And maybe we can have some ideas about an answer to that question. So two quotes. I guess I can start with the first question about the kind of digital back end. So when we're talking about kind of front end and back end, right? Front end and we wanna think of things that are like user facing, right? So if we're looking at a game or looking at a website or any type of digital experience, there's always people that are designing what the user sees. But there's of course always the back end of things. And if we're not all familiar with this, we're talking about where is that data going? How is it being logged? Who's designing the storage of that? And of course in games, that's always something that's there. If you go to any arcade and you see it, there's always a high score. There's somebody's initials and there's a couple of numbers, right? So it's always there, but the question is what are you doing with it? And that's kind of where we're going with GlassLab where if you're in a classroom, of course if you're playing a game, it's a teacher's role to assess the student's learning. But if you have a student in a computer and there's no teacher present after school or even in school at home, then the game has to kind of take the place. And that's where in like some CDEDU and future kind of efforts, it's exactly what we're doing is kind of building in the tracking to the back end so we can see what students are learning, where they failed, did they try again? Did they increase their competency over time, eventually succeed? And then how did that kind of change the next step? So GlassLab was just launched this year and SimCity was really the first big push we've made, but soon we're gonna be, hoping to work so we have teachers in the school and teachers in other schools being able to develop design challenges within SimCity of their own so that way they can make it applicable to the content learning in their classroom. I think with regards to assessment, there's different layers and different things to sort of look at in a variety of models and I'll talk a little bit about for us, we were looking at this in a very concentrated way, we were looking at, we wanted to sort of demonstrate the effectiveness of teaching teachers design thinking as a vehicle for helping them solve problems and help the students connect. And also as a Smithsonian Museum, who have these resources that we want people all over the country to use, we also knew that at a certain point we wanted to be able to say, okay, kids who are doing this are doing better on standardized tests because that right now is the vehicle for judgment. So we weren't judging ourselves in terms of what those things were, but we also wanted to make sure we were following that and we knew that couldn't happen overnight. So we have actually probably anywhere between 15 and 20% of our resources have actually gone into evaluating the effectiveness of our programs and we couldn't get to that standardized test till the end, but we started incrementally. So the first year we did the program and looked at it, we were able to demonstrate that the teachers reported that the kids were more engaged in design activity, in problem solving and in classroom content when design activities were involved. The second year we were able to demonstrate through attendance records that on the days where the kids knew they were doing design activities, there was less absenteeism. And the teachers were reporting that the kids who were sort of more at risk for a variety of reasons, whether it was English as a second language or behavioral issues were more engaged in behaving better or more participatory on the days they were doing design thinking. And now we all know obviously that to do better on the standardized test, the first thing you need to do is vote with your feet and be in class more often and be more engaged. So either way we were gonna take that, right? That worked for us on both levels. Then we were able to take that and develop it into our city of neighborhoods project and get not only that data, but we built on, again we looked at what the teachers were telling us and then we looked at ways that we could sort of document that for the following year. So we were able to demonstrate when the kids were participating in the civic based design projects that the teachers were keeping track of increased volunteerism in and out of school. So again, it's looking at the data and then moving on from that. From there we had enough data to go to a school system and say, we'd like to do a deep dive in a design intervention with all.