Student Innovation Teams- Part II: High School

Last week in Part I: Middle School, I explained how Minnetonka has added secondary student innovation teams over the past few years to our annual crowdsourced idea hunt  (for more on this, see Innovation is Now Our Strategic Plan). This week I will highlight the work of our high school Student Innovation Team which recently presented to our School Board. The group is advised by Ann Kaste, Information and Digital Learning Coordinator and Nicole Snedden, Innovation Coordinator and Design for Learning Project Leader. One of my sons is on the high school team this year, so I have been able to hear his perspective, too.

As you will learn from the video of their presentation to the School Board, the high school innovation team is split into small groups. The group presenting was tasked with redesigning a newly created open space after the removal of an old locker bay. They used the Human Centered Design process to get to the final design pictured. They identified their challenge with “How Might We..?” statements:

• How Might We design a quiet space that would allow for classes to remain uninterrupted while others were using this space?
• How Might We construct the space to not only foster quietness, but also collaboration?
• How Might We create a space that allows for easy maintenance and vigilance?   

The students met with different focus groups such as hall paras, custodians, students, and teachers. They learned about all sorts of concerns and hopes from the groups they interviewed, from the ease of cleaning the space, to the visibility of and collaboration opportunities for students meeting there, to the sound levels and the quality of the furniture. After gathering all this input and feedback, the students began to prototype options. 

They created two different prototypes and brought them to Intereum who designed a space using the student feedback. The final design includes movable walls that have acoustic panels to eliminate sound and whiteboard panels. The students explain in their proposal that “the panels allow the space to be separated and relatively private, but still allow for enough supervision that kids are kept safe. The walls also include school colors to blend in with the space around it”

The group applied for and was awarded a Design for Learning grant. Last week they were selecting fabric colors for the furniture. It should be done later this year and the team as well as all their classmates will be able to use the new space. Some quotes from their presentation show just how much the students learned from this process:

“Change takes work,” said Kristine. “It takes time, revisions, empathy… [I’ve learned] what it means to get things done. 

Lauren said she “improved my public speaking and presentation skills [and] learned through our own mistakes.” 

Colette explained that this work “pushed me to learn the value and benefits of seeing other people’s viewpoints.”

Nate described how “empathy is really important to the Human Design Process… Something’s that really stuck with me is the importance of talking with people and understanding their opinions and seeing where they come from...this will definitely help me later in life working on various projects… in college or future job. Empathy is the basis of everything.”

In addition to the locker bay remodel, student innovation teams at our high school are working on a variety of other ideas from improving the parking lot to therapy dogs. As I mentioned last week, students are engaging in motivating, real work meeting multiple dimensions on our Minnetonka Teaching & Learning Framework during this process: real-world learning, communication, collaboration, creativity, authentic problem solving, use of technology for learning, and more. All students, not just here in Minnetonka, can have these opportunities. Districts outside ours are partnering with Minnetonka to do both crowd-sourced innovation and establish student innovation teams.

Related posts:

• Student Innovation Teams- Part I of II: Middle School
• Annual Big Hunt for Ideas: Starting with A Spark by Identifying Problems First
• Student Led Innovation Through Human Centered Design
• Minnetonka Schools: Innovation is Now Our Strategic Plan
• Minnetonka Schools Big Idea Hunt
• Minnetonka Schools Innovation
• Flipping Parent Curriculum Night
• Systematic Innovation: The Top 4 of 40 Inventive Principles to Solve Problems
• The Mindset of Innovation: 5 Behaviors for Accelerating Breakthroughs
• Accelerating Changes Needed in Education
• Minnetonka Research: An In Depth, Highly Advanced High School Research Program
• Tonka Online High School Starting Year Five with 40+ Courses & 1200+ Students
• Why Teach Coding? Same Reasons to Teach Writing Even When Not All Students Will Be Writers
• Minnetonka Top 100+ Ideas for 1:1 Integration in 5th grade, English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and World Language
• Design for Learning Project Lead Nicole Snedden Wins ISTE Award
• Exceptional Minnetonka Teachers Recognized for Use of Technology
• More Minnetonka Schools Media Center Remodels
• Design for Learning: MMW Media Center Update
• Media Center Redesign at Minnetonka Middle School West
• Sneak Peek at Two Minnetonka Public School Media Center Summer Remodeling Projects
• The Hub: Minnetonka Makerspaces Launch
• Flipping Parent Curriculum Night

Student Innovation Teams- Part I of II: Middle School

Image source

About eight years ago Minnetonka moved from traditional strategic planning annually done by a representative committee to crowdsourcing ideas from all employees to gather and rank needs and ideas--read more in a previous post, Innovation is Now Our Strategic Plan. Over the past few years we have started getting students involved in this process, too. Three years ago our high school launched a Student Innovation Team and two years ago these teams began at our middle school. Recently, both levels of Student Innovation Teams presented to our School Board about their work. There was so much content presented I decided to post about it in two parts--this week an overview of the middle school students’ work and next the high school.

Minnetonka School Board Meeting 

As you can see in the video of their presentations, both middle schools have student innovation teams that meet regularly to identify, brainstorm, and come up with solutions to problems affecting their classmates and school. They learn about and use Human Centered Design which is grounded in empathy throughout this process. Students immerse themselves in the problems by interviewing and surveying classmates, teachers and other stakeholders to work toward a possible solution. After ideation, students prototype and test out possible solutions, then revise and repeat the process testing iterations. Students work cooperatively with one another in groups and communicate their efforts and progress. Throughout this process, students are engaging in motivating, real work meeting multiple dimensions on our Minnetonka Teaching & Learning Framework: real-world learning, communication, collaboration, creativity, authentic problem solving, use of technology for learning, and more.

The student innovation team at Minnetonka Middle School West is named the WISH Team- West Innovation Student Hackers Team. It is led by Dr. Paula Hoff, Principal, Sara Hunt, Instructional Technology Coach, and Lisa Reed, Tonka Coders and Makers Teacher on Special Assignment. One of the projects they showcased in the video (watch here) was their work with Moving Minds, a branch of Gopher Sport, designing classroom furniture products that are comfortable and  allow movement. Students helped provide feedback and design suggestions on products. Students took a field trip to the headquarters and were able to and tour the facility, seeing the products they helped work on and meeting staff working to name the product, make a logo and photo shoot to bring it to market.

At Minnetonka Middle School East, over thirty students in grades 7 and 8 are part of the student innovation team. It is coached by Lisa Reed and Julie Baeb, one of our Innovation consultants. There are seven groups of students who work on team projects/tasks as part of the student innovation team. Students have worked to improve the lunchroom experience, redesign learning spaces, product design, and more. The group highlighted in the video (watch here), named the Innovation X Team, tackled ways to provide their fellow classmates with brain and body breaks throughout the day.

As Eric Schneider, Associate Superintendent and Nicole Snedden, Innovation Coordinator and Design for Learning Project Leader stated in the opening of the presentation, we continue to embrace innovation as a strategy. By engaging not only our staff but our students, we are helping all those involved in education be change agents. This will improve the educational experience for everyone and lead to even more innovative solutions.

Related posts:

• Annual Big Hunt for Ideas: Starting with A Spark by Identifying Problems First
• Student Led Innovation Through Human Centered Design
• Minnetonka Schools: Innovation is Now Our Strategic Plan
• Minnetonka Schools Big Idea Hunt
• Minnetonka Schools Innovation
• Flipping Parent Curriculum Night
• Systematic Innovation: The Top 4 of 40 Inventive Principles to Solve Problems
• The Mindset of Innovation: 5 Behaviors for Accelerating Breakthroughs
• Accelerating Changes Needed in Education
• Minnetonka Research: An In Depth, Highly Advanced High School Research Program
• Tonka Online High School Starting Year Five with 40+ Courses & 1200+ Students
• Why Teach Coding? Same Reasons to Teach Writing Even When Not All Students Will Be Writers
• Minnetonka Top 100+ Ideas for 1:1 Integration in 5th grade, English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and World Language
• Design for Learning Project Lead Nicole Snedden Wins ISTE Award
• Exceptional Minnetonka Teachers Recognized for Use of Technology
• More Minnetonka Schools Media Center Remodels
• Design for Learning: MMW Media Center Update
• Media Center Redesign at Minnetonka Middle School West
• Sneak Peek at Two Minnetonka Public School Media Center Summer Remodeling Projects
• The Hub: Minnetonka Makerspaces Launch
• Flipping Parent Curriculum Night

Annual Big Hunt for Ideas: Starting with A Spark by Identifying Problems First

Minnetonka Innovation Update 2018 from Minnetonka Public Schools on Vimeo.

This is the eighth year that Minnetonka has had an annual Big Hunt for Ideas to find ways to make education better for students. Rather than developing a strategic plan with a few representative voices deciding district priorities, we use we use a crowd sourced software platform to gather input from all of our staff. Innovation is now our strategic plan. We also have student innovation groups that use this process to develop new ideas. Some major ideas over the past few years include our Vantage program, TonkaOnline, Minnetonka Research, Design for Learning program, and Tonka Codes program.

Gathering Sparks vs. Solutions

This year we are encouraging staff to simply post problems rather than jumping right to solutions. These problems are called "sparks" and are meant to get a conversation going in an effort to empathize with those affected by the problem and identify all stakeholders. From these starting conversations ideas will be generated in the coming months and possible solutions discussed, piloted, and as a result, changes implemented.

The video above was produced to highlight this process with a example scenario--a crowded hallway during passing time. The video showcases a wide variety of school employees participating in the spark discussion- classroom teachers, a counselor, a custodian, and a school principal. Together they collectively work to identify the issue and it's impact.   

All of our staff participate in this hunt--besides these staff positions highlighted in the video we also have paraprofessionals, food and nutrition services, office support, after school staff and all administrators involved. In just the past two weeks, almost 100 different sparks have been identified with hundreds of comments and views from staff. Pictured is an infographic made by our Innovation Coordinator, Nicole Snedden. The idea hunt is open for another week, so we will certainly have more added with more participation. It will be exciting to discover what new innovations and solutions result from this year's hunt!

Related posts:

• Student Led Innovation Through Human Centered Design
• Minnetonka Schools: Innovation is Now Our Strategic Plan
• Minnetonka Schools Big Idea Hunt
• Minnetonka Schools Innovation
• Flipping Parent Curriculum Night
• Systematic Innovation: The Top 4 of 40 Inventive Principles to Solve Problems
• The Mindset of Innovation: 5 Behaviors for Accelerating Breakthroughs
• Accelerating Changes Needed in Education
• Minnetonka Research: An In Depth, Highly Advanced High School Research Program
• Tonka Online High School Starting Year Five with 40+ Courses & 1200+ Students
• Why Teach Coding? Same Reasons to Teach Writing Even When Not All Students Will Be Writers
• Minnetonka Top 100+ Ideas for 1:1 Integration in 5th grade, English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and World Language
• Design for Learning Project Lead Nicole Snedden Wins ISTE Award

Student Led Innovation Through Human Centered Design

A while ago I wrote about our school district's new method of strategic planning--we have a crowdsourced idea hunt. To do this, we use a software program called Spigit to post ideas to our colleagues, who in turn can comment, question, and vote on each idea. Ideas are fleshed out, further developed and tested and range from small ideas that are easy to implement to big ideas that require extensive work and funding. Big ideas have included our Vantage program, TonkaOnline, Minnetonka Science Research Center and Tonka Codes program. Numerous smaller ideas have started from this process as well such as moving school picture day to be the same day as open house before school begins and another to flip parent curriculum night with teacher presentations as videos online. 

Over the past six years of this innovation work, we have incorporated Human Centered Design in the process. We begin with empathy, working to imagine the needs and feelings of those whom the idea and/or change will help. Then we brainstorm ideas and mock ups or prototypes, talking through the possibilities and solving for potential problems. Finally, the idea is tested and revised in the implementation phase. 

Students' ideation around problems and
opportunities to solve at school.

As part of her quarter long STEM Class, teacher Sara Hunt taught her students this human centered design process. Students learned to identify a problem and use empathy to identify possible problems and opportunities. They then worked on brainstorming possible solutions. As you can see in the video, the students looked at an issue affecting all of their classmates: the impact of homework. They used empathy and ideation, and then used the same software that our staff use for our innovation idea hunt to vote on ideas. This helped them find the main themes and areas of interest as they worked on possible solutions to lessen the impact of homework. 

You can read more about this innovation process, some of the past ideas that have been developed, and some related reflections below: 

• Minnetonka Schools: Innovation is Now Our Strategic Plan
• Minnetonka Schools Innovation
• Systematic Innovation: The Top 4 of 40 Inventive Principles to Solve Problems
• The Mindset of Innovation: 5 Behaviors for Accelerating Breakthroughs
• Accelerating Changes Needed in Education
• Minnetonka Research: An In Depth, Highly Advanced High School Research Program
• Tonka Online High School Starting Year Five with 40+ Courses & 1200+ Students
• Why Teach Coding? Same Reasons to Teach Writing Even When Not All Students Will Be Writers
• Minnetonka Top 100+ Ideas for 1:1 Integration in 5th grade, English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and World Language

Minnetonka Schools: Innovation is Now Our Strategic Plan

This is the fifth year Minnetonka Schools has run a innovation idea hunt using a crowd sourcing software program. In the past, we had a district strategic plan and a representative committee of teachers, parents, and administrators who met to brainstorm ideas of ways to improve our schools by generating a multi-year plan. We stopped that process and replaced it with this idea hunt. Innovation is now our strategic plan, and we have an ongoing process to collect ideas to make education better for our students. 

Each year around 120 ideas are posted in three categories: small (below $1,000), medium ($1,000 - $5,000), and large ($5,000+). Over the past five years, many ideas have come to fruition as the result of proposals our staff have submitted. For example, some major ideas have include our Vantage program, TonkaOnline, Minnetonka Research Center, Design for Learning program, and Tonka Codes program. Numerous smaller ideas have started from this process as well.  A couple of examples include moving school picture day to be the same day as open house before school begins and another to flip parent curriculum night with teacher presentations as videos online.

The software we use, Spigit, is also used by a number of major companies like Citi, Siemens, and United Health Care, which is locally headquartered in Minnetonka. We use the software to post ideas to our colleagues, who in turn can comment, question, and vote on each idea. Everyone can participate, from custodians to teachers to administrators. We have students and parents involved in the process of helping vet, test, and support ideas as well. This year, all ideas start out at the site level, with small ideas being developed and tested. The highest rated medium and large ideas from each site will advance to a district-level review.

As one of our principals, Cindy Andress stated, "Innovation is an important way for Minnetonka to respond to the changing needs of our students as well as the changing dynamics of our 21st century world. The great ideas that staff share through the idea hunt is making a big difference in the lives of our students." You can read more about the process and background here as well as in the video below. 

Spigit & Minnetonka Public Schools