When you open a book and literally start nodding in agreement with the very first sentence, you know you’re in for a wild ride.  That’s exactly what Book 16 in the Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc line up did!  Launch by John Spencer and AJ Juliani could not have come at a more perfect time this summer!  Big things are in store after reading this one!

This book is everything I want my daughters experiencing in their education.  It describes everything I want the media center to be for students… really, everything I want SCHOOL to be for students.  I’ve never really gotten into any of the “design thinking” protocols because they are so wordy… everything-“tion”… ideation, creation, reflection – my students needed a translaTION to understand half of it.  None of the ones I had seen really fit for middle school students; they were either too elementary or too difficult to understand.  Our school has been trying to find a new engineering/design process to implement and immediately upon seeing the LAUNCH cycle as described by John & AJ, I texted my principal.

The plan of implementation for this book will be school-wide!  The School Improvement Team (SIT) met last week; on the agenda was reviewing and selecting a design process as our current process is 10 steps long and just too much for our students. They didn’t see anything they were married tom so they began creating a mash-up of a few of the processes they saw, but it’s not been finalized!  With that in mind, I hope to have the opportunity to present the LAUNCH cycle to our SIT team as an option for our school’s design process.  I immediately fell in love with the process and the ease in which it can be implemented, and I believe our staff will too.

L – Look, Listen, Learn

A – Ask Tons of Questions

U – Understand the Process or Problem

N – Navigate Ideas

C – Create a Prototype

H – Highlight and Fix

LAUNCH to an audience.

At the end of last year, my principal requested that we begin thinking about a way to bring a focus of research skills back to our school.  When I saw that the U in LAUNCH relates directly to various types of research I all but squealed with joy!  The research methods discussed by John and AJ are exactly what I want my students to walk away knowing.  Research isn’t always about looking online or looking in a printed article or book.  Research is about learning.  It can happen in the form of an interview, watching multimedia, even action research with observation or through a hands-on experiment and collecting data.  This book came at the absolute perfect time, and I am so excited to share all I learned with my school!  The resources that John & AJ have made available are incredible!  Check out the website for their book here, as well as the individual websites of the authors – John’s is here and AJ’s can be found here!  I could spend hours just looking at the websites!

In the off-chance that my school does not choose to implement the LAUNCH cycle, I have a backup implementation plan (because that’s just how I roll; I’ve got a backup for the backup, but no need to share that one just yet).  As a backup plan (and likely implemented regardless of LAUNCH cycle implementation), I will pursue a Global Day of Design in May using the information given here.  This is an incredible opportunity for students to use their knowledge and unlock creativity in exciting ways.  I believe that being part of something much larger than our school will engage our students in meaningful ways.  Last year we held our first official Maker Faire event.  It was a terrific event, but I believe the Global Day of Design will bring about more creative products with a bigger purpose behind their creations than just the event in question.  I love that the LAUNCH cycle “ends” (we all know design thinking never really ends, but you understand, yes?) with launching to an authentic audience.  This is more than just a presentation, but actually seeing the design in action!  I believe this is a spectacular way for students to have real meaning behind their design, rather than the hypotheticals they are usually presented with.  I know my blogs being read by many of you has forced me to put much more thought into them.  Imagine how much harder our students will work when they know someone, other than their teacher and peers, are using their products.

Finally, Launch speaks multiple times about the power of challenges, risk-taking, and failure.

• “…design thinking isn’t about abandoning the standards.  It’s about raising the standards and challenging students to think at a deeper level.”
• “You will fail. It’s going to happen… failure is a part of the process for innovative teachers.  Each mistake is simply another iteration on the journey toward success…the only way you blaze a trail is by taking risks and failing forward.”
• “Design thinking encourages creative risk-taking with the goal of eventual mastery.”
• “It was the first time I had heard students talk about ‘failure’ in a positive light; they realized that creating big goals gave them the opportunity to fail forward.”
• “…we want kids to embrace mistakes as part of the learning process… each mistake is a chance to figure out what works and what doesn’t work.  When students have the permission to make mistakes, they define success as growth and learning.  They recognize that failure isn’t really failure at all”

Each of these quotes stood out to me.  Creating a safe culture where it is okay to fail is of utmost importance when implementing design thinking.  It is what I hope our media center has become in the two years that I’ve been there.

I want students to know that it’s okay to mess up, that it’s great to make a mistake, that failure isn’t final.

Launch was such a powerful book to me!  I created multiple BookSnaps and posted them on Twitter, check them out!

This is going to be EPIC! #LAUNCHbook Already nodding in agreement with @spencerideas @ajjuliani #DBC50Summer #BookSnaps #designthinking pic.twitter.com/pElztp7Wby

— Alicia Ray (@iluveducating) July 14, 2018

 

What is your creative approach? Love this graphic from @spencerideas blog https://t.co/mHFqv7WbKX

I’m most def the Geek! I enjoy creating order from chaos. I crave information. I want to know all things; not so much for a purpose, but just to KNOW them! #LaunchBook #DBC50Summer pic.twitter.com/3ROlf1HlVP

— Alicia Ray (@iluveducating) July 15, 2018

 

Powerful quote from @spencerideas & @ajjuliani in #LaunchBook – Looking forward to work toward changing this in my corner of the world! #DBC50Summer #tlap #LeadLAP pic.twitter.com/7fR15AZvJa

— Alicia Ray (@iluveducating) July 15, 2018

 

#LaunchBook is blowing my mind. This book is everything I want my daughters doing in their classes every day! #DBC50Summer #tlap #LeadLAP pic.twitter.com/L1vdqYsztu

— Alicia Ray (@iluveducating) July 15, 2018

 

I may have an excessive highlighting problem OR this book may have been that amazing… I go with option B! Loved #LaunchBook by @spencerideas & @ajjuliani – look forward to blogging tomorrow #DBC50Summer! Big things in the works from this book!!! #hugeimplementation #ohboy #tlap pic.twitter.com/Kd7G2Gf5GE

— Alicia Ray (@iluveducating) July 15, 2018

Be sure to join the #LaunchBook community on Twitter as they discuss Design Thinking, creativity, and bringing out the maker in every student.  Follow both John & AJ on Twitter, at @spencerideas and @ajjuliani, respectively.  The Flipgrid is available, as always, as a space for global collaboration in reflection and implementation of the book!  In this Flipgrid, tell about a time you failed in the classroom!  What did you learn from it? How have you improved your teaching practice because of it?  It’s a safe space, so share, share, share!  We can learn from one another here!  The password is DBCSummer, as usual.

Andrea Paulakovich, a dear friend and vital member of my PLN, joined in the #DBC50Summer and suggested the spectacular idea of adding Flipgrid as a way to share ideas!  She’s super awesome – you should follow her at @apaulakovichIRT & her #DBC50Summer journey here!

Launch inspired another book by John Spencer and AJ Juliani titled Empower.  This book is part of the publishing company IMpress.  You can read more about IMpress here.  So why don’t you head on over to Amazon and purchase your own copies of both of these awesome books Launch AND Empower?!?!  I was blown away by Launch and look forward to rereading with my peers at work as we, hopefully, implement the LAUNCH cycle in design thinking.  I will certainly be reading and blogging about Empower once I complete the DBC books.

*Side Note: Within this book is a step-by-step process to uncover your passions… seriously, I’m not making that up!  This is another thing I fell in love with, as I plan to go through it to see if I can discover my educational passions (see Play Like A Pirate post).  How incredible would it be for our students to go through this process, too?!

The 17th book (my favorite number, coincidentally) is none other than Kids Deserve It by Adam Welcome and Todd Nesloney.  This book… well, wow… no words. Just go get it, while I reread it and try to form the words needed to describe it in the blog. Not sure it can be done. Grab your copy and settle in! You will quickly remember your WHY while you read that one!