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Design thinking is now being applied to abstract entities, such as systems and services, as well as to devise strategies, manage change and solve complex problems.

d.school, was launched in 2004 as a graduate program that integrates business, the social sciences, the humanities and other disciplines into more traditional engineering and product design

take on the world’s messy problems together.

deliberate mash-up of industry, academia and the big world beyond campus is a key

rigorous engineering education; entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking; and the arts, which broadly encompasses creativity, innovation and design

students needed to learn how to think critically and creatively every bit as much as they needed to learn finance or accounting.

has design thinking now become the new liberal arts? After pondering the question, I believe the answer is: No

Design Thinking is frequently identified as an engaging process and methodical framework for approaching complex, multidisciplinary problems in ways that consistently result in solutions that are successful and often creative in unpredictable way

How is design thinking human-centered,

Do disciplines, in order to evolve and advance, need some place in which to play and from which to be provoked?… Research-as-questioning is a much freer and more playful approach to discovery. It keeps us in closer contact with our natural disposition to curiosity and wonder.”

concluded that their action-oriented approach to problem solving did not pay proper attention to past knowledge. “A truly human-centered design, if it takes culture at all seriously, would have to take pastness seriously

But for them to really shape the future of university learning, they will have to do a better job of engaging with precisely what the university was designed to promote, and what design thinking, with its emphasis on innovation, has thus far completely ignored: the past.”

The difference between science and engineering is often described by the nature of the questions that are asked: scientists ask why as they attempt to understand the world, while engineers ask why not as they attempt to change it and create what has never been

In particular, “computational thinking” is captivating educators, from kindergarten teachers to college professors, offering a new language and orientation to tackle problems in other areas of life.

Computer Science Principles, focused not on learning to code but on using code to solve problems.

computational thinking — its broad usefulness as well as what fits in the circle. Skills typically include recognizing patterns and sequences, creating algorithms, devising tests for finding and fixing errors, reducing the general to the precise and expanding the precise to the general.

“Students are working on authentic projects and problems.” He gave an example of a cross curricular physics and environmental science class that studied the physics of power and electricity. “Our students learned those skills and then rewired houses that were destroyed in New Orleans’ 9th Ward.

Each school is given a coach who visits throughout the school year, checks on lesson plans, suggests changes and helps troubleshoot problems. And New Tech focuses on nurturing the leadership capacity of principals so they can continue to innovate with teachers.

decisions by consensus

When kids enter his seventh grade they are so used to the traditional school system, they don’t know how to work collaboratively on projects. “At first their grades go down just because it’s projects. It’s actually kind of harder because you have to be a self-learner.” In traditional schools, kids are constantly being directed, so they don’t have to think for themselves as much

One recent institutional adaptation is the creation of so-called CS+X initiatives at schools like Stanford, Northwestern and the University of Illinois. These programs are hybrid majors that combine computing with other disciplines, including anthropology, comparative literature and history — a nod to the reality that software skills can advance research in nearly every field.

Today, at many universities, at least half of the student population takes the intro courses.

coding as a window to “computational thinking,” which involves abstract reasoning, modeling and breaking down problems into the recipelike steps of an algorithm

It is a biological mechanism for making learning enjoyable.

Play helps meld emotion into the experience of learning.

If a child is denied the opportunity to play, the body and mind fight back.

Play allows children to let off steam

positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and increase cognitive flexibility.  Why not embrace the tool in the curriculum?  

When school becomes a stressful place for a child, it is no longer a supportive, positive learning environment

teachers at traditional schools can adapt their classrooms to include more choices, more creativity, and more open play

Play has become a luxury – available in private schools that espouse progressive learning principles, but crowded out of public schools by a teach-to-the-test mentality.

Despite increasing research on play and emotion, relatively few studies of play within the school environment exist.

Increasingly, educators are calling for a return (link is external) to the greater integration of play into elementary education.

Fredrickson