University of Texas Part 1

So, I’ve just spent three incredible days at the University of Texas! Everyone was so accommodating and helpful and I’ve enjoyed my time here immensely. The weather was also great, sunny and warm pretty much every day.

Mackenzie Merrill, the Outreach Specialist, took me on a tour of the Foundry, a makerspace set up in the Fine Arts Library. This makerspace is available free to all students, faculty and staff members. The initial setup was provided with a grant from the Hearst Foundation. It includes 3D printers, laser cutters, sewing machines and a recording studio, all of which are well-utilised.

They also have virtual reality equipment which I got to try out. Have a look at this video where I’m doing some VR painting and talking to Boris Brodsky, arts and creative technologies librarian in the Fine Arts Library.

The Foundry is staffed by students who help new users in using the equipment (it’s a requirement to be certified before using the equipment), as well as set up equipment for workshops. One of these students, Marisol, was kind enough to show me how to use the 3D printer. Experts are brought in to run workshops on various topics – one of the days I was there, they were getting ready to run an Arduino workshop.

J.E. Johnson and Karen Maness took me through a project to create three raptor costumes for a theatre production of ‘Enron’. Students involved in the project came from a multitude of disciplines (e.g. English, Marketing, Film & TV, Theatre, Costume), and the project used design thinking, collaboration and practical skills to successfully complete the project. They had various constraints to work with, such as how often the dinosaurs would be on stage, that the performers wearing the costumes would be small dancers, and that the dinosaurs needed to pick up money. The process of mind-mapping using Post-it notes gave all students a voice, even the quiet ones. They used a working timeline to motivate the students, with markers which were moved according to where they were up to. Slack was used by the students to collaborate with each other.

J.E. and Karen wanted to create a startup atmosphere with a flat organisation structure and groups were organised by the tasks they were doing. The project was largely student-led, researching techniques on the internet. Professionals were also brought in to assist with specialty areas, with backgrounds in special effects, animation and costume. Early prototypes were created using pool noodles and masking tape so that they could think about the process rather than be burdened by the various technologies that could be used. The dinosaurs ran using Arduinos and were remotely-controlled. The following video shows J.E. and Karen explaining to me how various components of the raptors were created.

The main idea behind this project was to create collaborative students who are nimble, and able to fail quickly and recover. They wanted the students to be employable and the skills that they’ve used in this project are very transferable to other industries.

The following video that they produced gives an overview of the project over the semester. Some other videos about the project are also available on their YouTube channel.

The last few days of SXSW

Some highlights from the last few days of SXSW:

I missed out on the session about Leading for a culture of innovation and creativity so instead went to Black Gotham: Immersive Storytelling & Technology. This was an interesting session where we downloaded an app called Blippar and we were given a postcard to use with the app:

 

They run a walking tour of New York using the picture cards with the app. The app then brings the cards to life with augmented reality to tell historical stories. Next time I’m in New York I’d be interested to do this tour!

“What have we learned creating 2000 startups?” was a presentation by academics from FIAP a Brazilian university which runs courses in technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. Their experience of courses in Brazil were very theoretical and they realised that young people need to be equipped with a new set of skills and be more creative. They use experience based learning and entrepreneurial projects to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs. Students learn things like Internet of Things, robotics, coding, artificial intelligence, and they partner with big companies to work on real world problems and every Undergraduate and Masters student is expected to create a startup for their final project. Some things they’ve learned along the way:

• They use design thinking to deeply understand problems
• Resilience can be developed
• Students need collaborative and interactive spaces
• Teachers need to be supported and taught the same skills as students to help them to change their mindset.

Doreen Lorenzo from the University of Texas presented “Graduating problem solvers to fix the workplace”. She also stressed the importance of using design thinking and that students need problem solving and teamwork skills. Jobs that won’t be replaced by machines are those using creativity. Changes were made and new courses created to incorporate creativity and collaboration across disciplines, which leads to more innovation. To move towards this kind of model, you need a lot of communication between all parties and you need to be a step ahead of the current technology.

There are also lots of displays at SXSW showing the latest gadgets and tech, as well as a marketplace selling all sorts of stuff. In the Virtual Cinema room, there were multitudes of VR and AR experiences to try out. I particularly liked the behind the scenes of the new Wes Anderson film ‘Isle of Dogs’ – animated dogs spoke to you about their character while workers created models, scenery and props all around you.

I don’t know what this woman was doing but it was very real for her!

I’ve also been able to attend some great films as part of the film festival – “Brothers’ Nest”, a black comedy by Australian brothers Clayton and Shane Jacobson (of “Kenny” fame), “Hearts Beat Loud”, a father-daughter film with great music, “The Breaker Upperers”, a hilarious comedy from New Zealand, a film by Ethan Hawke called “Blaze” (about a local singer Blaze Foley), and an excellent documentary on Lynyrd Skynyrd called “If I Leave Here Tomorrow”.

So I’m thoroughly exhausted and looking forward to a few days off!

Hackathons are dope!

Day 4 started with a session called ‘Why design sprints always end in tears’, where the facilitators looked at the things that can go wrong in design sprints. Google has developed a design sprint kit, and you can read more about design sprints there. They discussed design sprints as a five day process to solve important business questions involving a range of people with different skills. Some of the problems they identified include:

• people don’t understand the problem
• the problem isn’t a good candidate for a design sprint
• they’re doing it wrong
• they’re getting wrong feedback.

Some suggestions for improvement include:

• lots of communication with all the team members
• understanding that it’s a learning process
• make sure that you have a goal to focus on before the sprint to make sure that the right people are there
• as it takes a lot of time for people to be there, there’s a temptation to just include designers, however this is faulty thinking.

The next session ‘How can big companies and entrepreneurs collaborate?’ was a panel of people from Rice University, large companies and a startup.

Rice University run a worldwide business plan competition for students.

Bechtel is a 120 year old engineering company that wanted to improve the way it was making products. They realised they wouldn’t get anything different from the same sources so looked to startups and using new ideas to solve older problems.

Companies are finding it harder to innovate as consumers are demanding more and companies can’t do it all on their own. Some points from the panel:

• For companies, set up a neutral creative space and cut down on typical company jargon and hurdles.
• Startups should understand what the company wants.
• Startups need to make sure they meet with the right person at the company. Does the company have an innovation office or team?

‘Student hackathons are dope’ was a very interesting session presented by people from Major League Hacking, and Capital One, a finance company which runs hackathons. They talked about the student hacker revolution and that many thousands of students gave up their weekends to do hackathons because it was something they were passionate about.

A hacker is someone who solves problems in a clever way. People who attend hackathons are creative people who come from different backgrounds and don’t necessarily have technical skills – anyone can be a hacker. Most students say that they rely on peer instruction rather than standard lectures and learning by doing.

They also talked about how to create a hacker community. Sharon Lin started going to hackathons in high school and started one in her own high school because she enjoyed it so much. At the basic level, all you need to start a hackathon is food, supplies and wifi.

Jason Valentino from Capital One noticed that when they hired graduates, that they loved playing with technology and kept going back to their university campus to mentor at hackathons. This gave them the idea to invest in hackathons and hold internal hackathons.

I found this session very inspiring and there are plenty of resources on the Major League Hacking website.

One of the film keynotes was a discussion with the director of the latest Star Wars movie Rian Johnson and Mark Hamill, great watching for a Star Wars fan!

My last session for today was called ‘3 innovation superpowers everyone has but isn’t using’ which probably would have been better if the writing on the slides wasn’t so small and they went through them so fast! Essentially they are:

• Super intelligence
  • Understanding your customer and having customer obsession
  • Great products and services come from deeply understanding your customer
  • A lot of organisations launch things they can make, not things that people want

• Super speed
  • Create a diverse and agile team
  • Reaching a goal at an accelerated pace
  • Don’t get too precious with ideas, early drafts are disposable

• Super synergy
  • Build ecosystems of partners
  • You can do more together than alone.

 

 

 

 

I’m going to write a screenplay

So Day 3 started for me with the Film keynote by Barry Jenkins,  director of the Academy Award winning Moonlight. You can watch it on the SXSW YouTube channel (have a look at their other videos too). He basically talked about his journey in film and I found him very interesting.

The next was called ‘Based on a true story’, which I found very motivating and inspirational. It was presented by two screenwriters, Andrew Logan and Taylor Allen, who wrote a screenplay which has recently been filmed called ‘Chappaquiddick’ . This is based on the true story about Ted Kennedy and a car accident (look it up if you don’t know the incident). They discussed the process of writing a narrative story based on true incidents, from identifying stories – look for ‘blue ocean’, where no one else is looking, where will culture be in several years time – , how and where to do research, outlining and writing your screenplay, and giving yourself a deadline. I actually came away really inspired to find a true story to write about, so if you have any ideas, let me know!

My last speaker session for today was ‘Accidentally making the most popular podcasts ever’ by Ira Glass. Apparently he’s a big deal in the US and his podcasts include This American life, Serial and S town. He was very entertaining and talked about how to tell a story, that if you can talk about stuff that amuses you, then other people will be amused, and to always try new things.

Then this evening I went to the Texas State University Innovation Lab presentations. Unfortunately this wasn’t held at the University, but there was free food and drink! Students presented projects they’d been working on in teams, including an eye scanner for security, which included checking eye movements (so no fear of someone ripping your eyeball out like in the movies!), a traffic app which combined public transport and ride share options as well the environmental impact, projects using solar power, and integrating Internet of Things (IoT) smart devices with AR holograms to interact with smart objects.

I need more sleep

So it’s now Saturday (yes I’m a few days late!) and the conference continues over the weekend. I might get some sleep next weekend!

I’m here early (9.30) for ‘Want to fix corporate innovation?’, a panel session with people from different companies, including Comcast,  BBVA (a big European bank), the US Air Force and KITE, a Silicon Valley company working with startup accelerators.

Comcast runs a startup accelerator program called Tech Stars.

BBVA is a large European bank which runs a fintech Open Talent competition.

The US Air Force runs an internal program called Spark Tank to encourage air force personnel to pitch innovative ideas to improve air force procedures.

They’ve generally found that senior management and younger staff members want them to be innovative but they’re up against the frozen middle, the agitators who don’t want to change. However they believe the innovation culture spreads and benefits the whole organisation. (I’ve written a lot more notes which I may add to later).

One of my film sessions that I attended was with the director Darren Aronofsky (Mother, Looper, The Wrestler). It was great to get some tips, here is his top 10 for indie film creators.

1. Make the film only you can make. Original voice is your main gift.
2. Persistence is nine tenths of the game. Keep fighting constantly . The more people who tell you no, the more you know you’re doing right.
3. Work with family (people you know). Collaboration is key.
4. Do your homework. Time is limited on set.
5. Adapt to reality. Turn your limitations into advantages.
6. Don’t be afraid of your actors. They want to be emotional.
7. Where is my audience? Always think about them, not yourself.
8. Commit to the vision.  See it through to the end.
9. Let your child go. You never finish a film, you abandon a film.
10. Care about your story. Art is about disruption, don’t make empty films.

After this was a very interesting talk called ‘Doc filmmakers on how to tell a true crime story’. Three directors talked about films or TV series that they had made on a true crime story and the challenges and issues that they faced, including the effects it had on them personally.

I missed out on a couple of popular sessions that I wanted to see so ended up in Hackmethon, relaunch your life. This session was based on the premise that you can use your family and friends to help you make decisions about your life e.g. a career change, and Tal Shmeuli, the presenter, worked out a whole process. You can download his process from here.

In amongst all the sessions of course, there are interesting things happening on the streets. I found this group of people heading off somewhere. I have also seen a Japanese guy wearing just a giant red nappy (on two separate days).

SXSW Day 1

So I mentioned a change in accommodation – what a pain my accommodation has been! So, if you ever plan to go to SXSW in Austin, Texas, make sure you lock in your accommodation far in advance and keep checking on it. I had started looking back in September, mostly AirBnB because I was going to be here for 3 weeks. When people realised when it was, several immediately jacked up their prices so it was out of my price range. I finally booked a new AirBnB, so I guess he hadn’t realised the timing. Anyway, about 6 weeks before I left, he sold his property so cancelled my booking. I went back to one of the original ones I was looking at and the first 6 days were at the normal price (I guess SXSW EDU doesn’t warrant a price rise). So I booked in there for the first week then booked a Super 8 (far away on the highway) on booking.com for the rest. Fast forward to 10 minutes before leaving for the airport and I get a phone call from booking.com – their system has overbooked this property so they have to cancel! I managed to rebook at another Super 8, further up the highway and more expensive. Okay, rant over, now onto more inspiration!

So going to SXSW EDU prepared me in a small way for what was to come. I knew where a lot of the conference rooms were and was able to pick up my conference badge early (as I was already there). Here’s a picture of the empty room – all those lines ready to be filled up the next day!

So SXSW will be a combination of sessions for my study tour as well as sessions relating to my teaching area and personal interest, particularly film. A similar system of lining up early for the sessions you want is in place, however with some additional procedures. There are different streams of film, music and interactive, or you can have a Platinum badge which covers all three (that’s what I’ve got!). Most sessions have a Primary line and a Secondary line, depending on the content – fortunately Platinum is always in the Primary line. However there are so many thousands of people here that you can still miss out, so it’s a matter of putting on the running shoes and sprinting between sessions. There are also more locations over a few blocks, so I’m getting my step count in!

The first session I attended was on Corporate Accelerators: What Startups Should Know. The panel included several company executives who work with both internal and external startups. George Watt from CA Technologies runs an internal startup program for their employees, which I found an interesting idea. They want to develop their employees and leadership, growing the talent within the company. They create an environment which takes away the risks of doing it on your own. They’ve found that doing this affects innovation across the whole company.

Kara Bortone from Johnson & Johnson talked about their startup program, which focuses on healthcare and they have a lot of resources available online.

Yael Vizel is a startup founder of Zeekit. She had an interesting story about visiting the Google office in Israel. Every floor of their office building was designed in a different theme, beautifully designed. However the floor which housed the startup program had bare floors and walls – this is because they have to have a sense of necessity, they can’t just have everything handed to them.

Next up was the first fun session in the Film stream – Rotten Tomatoes ‘Ýour opinion sucks’. The audience was given signs with a fresh tomato on one side and rotten on the other. The panel and audience gave their opinion on certain movies and the audience voted, which was a fun way to start the conference!

The last one I attended today was ‘Do more, do things that were previously impossible’, which was generally about creating a successful technology ecosystem. It is possible to use technology and create more jobs at the same time.

 

 

Goodbye to new friends, hello to new experiences

So today we arrive at the last day of SXSW EDU and it’s been such an inspiring four days. Today was a shortened program with lots of people wheeling suitcases around ready to fly back home (I’ll be hanging around for SXSW which starts tomorrow).

My first session was on Expanding maker education through community hubs, with speakers from the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, the Scott Family Amazeum and the San Mateo County Office of Education (his job title was STEM Coordinator of Maker Education!). The partnership is called Making Spaces. They set up maker hubs to support schools, funded through crowdfunding and Google (who invested $500,000). This is aimed at Elementary schools and each school forms a core team of staff (a combination of teachers and admin staff). They also run workshops to train the teams in using the resources.

I missed out on my next session choice so I sat in on From MOOCs to Teach Outs, with speakers from the University of Michigan talking about using their MOOC platforms to provide face to face or blended free, short courses on socially urgent topics. This pdf has a bit more info.

To finish the day, we listened to a couple of keynote speakers. One of these was Jessica Lahey who talked on Teaching the Gift of Failure. Essentially it was about the harm that parents are doing to their child by not letting them fail, helping them do their schoolwork etc. as this sets up their child to give up when life gets too hard. Things like paying their child for good grades undermines motivation and creativity. They need to learn autonomy and competence by giving them work that’s just a bit harder than the last time so that they can work through it and make it stick in their memory. Jessica had a book on the subject which she was signing and I managed to get one for free as she was giving a few away!

So today I also said goodbye to my new found friend Jana, and I’ll be getting ready for SXSW tomorrow (I also have to move accommodation, but that’s another story!).

Creativity is the name of the game

My third day started with a great presentation from Adobe on creative problem solving, which they call the critical future job skill. Stephen Child first talked about cultivating creative strengths and the qualities that support the creative process, being curious, passionate and persistent.

Some ways to cultivate creative ideation include brainstorming, storyboarding, assumption smashing, lateral thinking and problem reversal.

Tacy Towbridge discussed a study done by Adobe on the importance of creative problem solving and said there’s a lack of emphasis on these skills in the classroom.

Many of the reasons given as barriers to teaching creative problem solving included lack of access to software and hardware, both at home and in the classroom. It was noted that creative problem solving can be taught without technology but often the tools rely on it.

Most educators believe that we need to find ways to better integrate creative problem solving into the existing curriculum, as well as reform the curriculum to better nurture creative problem solving.

Of course, Adobe is marketing their own creative tools and technology and obviously has a vested interested in creativity, however much research has shown that creative skills are important. By teaching students how to think, learn and apply what they’ve learned, we would be setting them up to handle working life better.

Some of Adobe’s initiatives include Project 1324, a community platform for artists, and Adobe Spark, software that you can use for free.

This session was followed by a workshop called ‘The Changemakers Challenge’ by Kevan Gilbert about leading change through complex organisations. We played a game (which you can download) to understand how we might feel in certain situations.

The main takeaways from this session were as follows:

• Involve your stakeholders e.g. teachers, students, in any change
• Be open and honest, state your goals
• You need to create a safe space to encourage people to contribute
• Instead of trying to change everything at once, focus on one teacher at a time and build partners and allies
• If there are naysayers, demonstrate how it will work and why it’s good
• Use students as a resource because they want things to improve
• If you get complaints you have no power over, hand the power back and ask how they would improve it.

Next up was a session called ‘Collaborate to Innovate’, with Bridget Burns from the University Innovation Alliance and Jaye Fenderson, who made a documentary about the innovators working the change the future of higher education.

They discussed a system set up in 2015 to address the problem of student dropouts, which involves collaborating with other universities. They are more involved in the administration side rather than the educational side,  however it was still interesting. They set up the UIA Fellows program incorporating a student success team.

Then we had a ‘field trip’ out to Austin Community College to check out their new learning space, the ACCelerator, including drinks and nibbles. Unfortunately for my vegetarian friend we were still in Texas where meat is king, so she had to get by on carrot sticks and fruit. Anyway, it a very large space  (I think around 600 workstations, see the pics) combined with roaming tutors and mentors for assistance. They had a system of coloured plastic cups that you put on top of the desk, which had a light, so the tutors could see if you needed help. Some sections were for specific topics e.g. maths and some computers were for dedicated software, such as animation.

The location itself was very interesting, as it used to be  a shopping mall, and the main street is still called Highland  Mall Boulevarde. 

Prepare to be inspired

Today’s keynote was pretty inspiring: Michael J Sorrell from Paul Quinn College talked about how he turned around a college that was about to close due to dismal performances and changed it into a sought after ‘work college’. Their philosophy includes the Four Ls:

• Leave places better than you found them
• Leave a legacy
• Lead from where you are
• Love something greater than yourself.

Their formula is to:

• preach hope
• practise patience
• instil resilience
• be entrepreneurial in thought and action
• lead with love.

They have a corporate work program, in collaboration with companies like AT&T, JCPenney and Fedex, where the students work in the field they’re studying (about 10-15 hpw) and receive an annual cash stipend, as well as credit towards fees. They figure that most of their students have to work anyway so it should be in a job where they’ll gain skills for their career instead of just for survival.

They use project based learning, fused with entrepreneurial thought and action. A core component is to be able to work in groups.

They’ve also identified the following essential skills which are incorporated across the curriculum:

• Writing  (grammar)
• Speaking (rhetoric)
• Reasoning (critical thinking)
• Building digital mastery (digital literacy).

The session on ‘Design thinking, Social Good and Breaking Higher Ed’ was presented by Elon University. They’re experimenting with a project run over a whole semester, combining multiple subjects. Using design thinking, the students collaborated with the local community and businesses to solve social challenges.

The students experience teamwork including creative thinking, communication, research and problem solving, as well as social responsibility. The project gave them real world skills and they learned that failure is data for the next iteration.

The next session was a workshop on one of my favourite subjects, rubrics! This was called Metarubric by Louisa Rosenheck from MIT and involved playing a game (you can download the game cards from here). Basically I learned that I was already using rubrics correctly but it was nice to get that validation.

Next was a short talk by someone from HundrED called Scaling innovations across borders. HundrED is a non profit which is distributing educational innovations across the world. These are innovations that have been developed by educational staff for their own use but could be used elsewhere and HundrED accelerates them after a vetting process.

Another interesting one was ‘Educating teachers: Closing the digital skills gap’ by Seamus Sands. He talked about the education system in Ireland and that noted that there’s a STEM supply gap in teachers. Their curriculum includes computational thinking for 8-14 years old but teachers don’t have the confidence to teach these skills,

He’s involved in training the teachers, then they go back and support them at school so they can train other teachers.

Of course it’s not a conference without the play areas where you can check out the latest tech. It seems the theme here is makerspaces and the tools you can use, including these 3D doodle pens.

The journey begins

And so my journey begins. The first stop in my study tour is Austin, Texas, to attend both the SXSW EDU and SXSW conferences. This week I attended SXSW EDU and will give you a bit of a summary of the sessions I attended.

I managed to meet a conference buddy at the Early Bird Social on Sunday afternoon. Jana Gerard runs the IDEA Studio at Lindenwood University in St Charles Missouri. She’s in charge of teaching pre-service teachers how to use various tech so that they’re comfortable using it in the classroom. Sounds like a good idea to me!

The opening keynote was called ‘Stories of Schooling and Getting Schooled’, a collection of hilarious stories told by teachers, which we could all relate to, in collaboration with the storytelling group The Moth.

At this conference, there are hundreds of sessions to choose from, thousands of attendees and you select your session by just turning up. So I found out the hard way that I needed to run (or at least walk quickly) to the sessions I wanted to attend. Unfortunately, I missed out on my 1^st and 2^nd choices after the keynote (I got delayed by a woman sitting next to me who decided to have a political rant and I didn’t want to be rude by leaving) so I attended one on using open educational resources to achieve equity – interesting but not on my radar. I did learn that equality (everyone has the same) is not the same as equity (some may need more than others or more personalised).

However, the session after lunch was one of the highlights of the week. ‘Rigorous Whimsy: Understanding through Creativity’ was presented by Amy Burvall and Dan Ryder. We learned about critical creativity through various activities using lego, drawings and oreo cookies (I restrained from eating mine!). I was so impressed I bought the book.

Another interesting (but short) session was on The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking by Edward Burger, which are as follows:

1. An appreciation for deep understanding
2. The power of failing
3. The art of creating questions
4. The flow of ideas
5. Change to allow people to grow.

I also found this blog post which explains each in more detail.