Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner

Notes and thoughts from  and inspired by Tony Wagner's book Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World.

"Toay innovation is more driven by people's creativity than by high-level scientific research."

In a large survey conducted by GE in 2011, of a thousand senior business executives in a dozen different countries, 99% of respondents believe innovation is the way to be more competitive nationally.  88% agree innovation is the best way to create jobs in their country, and 69% agree with the above statement that  innovation today is about people's creativity more than high-level scientific research.

Innovation is .....
creativity with a real-world purpose such that the result creates value and is adopted by large numbers of people.

Seven survival skills needed by today's workers

1. Critical thinking and problem solving
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
3. Agility and adaptability
4. Initiative and entrepreneurship
5. Accessing and analyzing information
6. Effective oral and written communication
7. Curiosity and imagination 

These are important and necessary but not sufficient to be an innovator.

What is needed to be an innovator?

Tim Brown's characteristsics of "design thinkers" 

from his Harvard Business Review article June 2008 entitled "Design Thinking"

• empathy (putting people first and seeing the world from multiple perspectives by questioning and observing )
• optimism and perseverance
• experimentalism (the trial and error processs, iteration)
• collaboration (often having expertise yourself in different fields)

Teresa Amabile's Harvard Business Review article "How to Kill Creativity" Sep-Oct 1998.

From page 27, Chapter 1 "A Primer on Innovation"

"What do you suppose the foudners of Goodle, Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Amazon's founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos; Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales; Julia Child;  and rapper Sean "P. Diddy" Combs all have in common?  Gregersen's research uncovered an extraordinary commonality among some of the most innovative individuals: they all went to Montessori schooles, where they learned through play.  The research about the importance of play in children's development spans many decades.  In the twentieth centure, Maria Montessori, Lev Vygotsky, and Jean Piaget, and others did groundbreaking research on the ways in which children learn through play."

Creating, making, and being innovative are central to being human.

The following video clips drive this message home.  I've ordered them by inspirational power and brevity.

Elder Uchtdorf - 2min - "The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before.

Everyone can create. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty."  http://bit.ly/3PS9ZM

Preview of Design & Thinking movie - 2min 

Dale Dougherty - 12 min - "All of us are makers!"  including clips from an old Cheverolet video, "Of all things Americans are, we are makers."

Lessons to learn in education: Art Robinson, Next Generation Science Standards, Standard Based Grading

Lessons from Dr. Robinson and homeschooling

I highly recommend that any of you interested in your children's education go read the story of Art Robinson.  His wife prepared to homeschool their kids and be their teacher.  Then she died unexpectedly leaving Art alone to do it.  Being a professor he couldn't be their teacher, but instead provided an example of study and work and provided the discipline needed to keep them on task doing their own work while he stayed in the same room with them and did his work.  The results that he, or rather his children, obtained are phenomenal.  For the full story, go to robinsoncurriculum.com and look for the section on the left titled "The Robinson Story" or just click here http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/view/rc/s31p54.htm

Being a scientist myself I have been inspired by Dr. Robinson's commitment to mathematics.  Like him I believe that mathematics provides the needed foundation for physics (and computer programming).  Then physics provides the foundation for chemistry.  Together chemistry and physics provide the foundation for all the complexity of biology.

Reteaching myself

Anyway, I have made mathematics a daily part of my labors as a postdoctoral fellow and started with the derivation of the volume of a sphere.  This took much longer than I anticipated because I was committed to doing it all from scratch.  This required that I return to the roots of that enigmatic number Pi which when multiplied by the radius gives the half of the perimeter of a circle which in turn can be considered the width of a rectangle of height r.  The gem I re-discovered that really convinced me that I would've done better educating myself than spending so much time in lectures was the relationship between the surface area and volume of the sphere.  The surface area is the derivative of the volume of the sphere.  These beautiful relationships were lost on me or never taught during my public schooling.  The same can be applied to the volume of the cylinder and its surface areas.  The volume is Pi*r^2*height.  The surface area of the flat top and bottom are the derivative with respect to the height and thus are Pi*r^2.  The surface are of the curved side is the derivative with respect to r and is thus 2*Pi*r*height which makes perfect sense because we know the perimeter of the circle defining the cylinder is 2*Pi*r and multiplying by the height gives the area.

After this experience I am inclined to agree with Dr. Robinson that public schools don't provide the ideal environment for children to learn rather they offer too many distractions, reward mediocrity far too often, and grade based on percentages of completed homework, participation, and other things that have little to do with a students ability to perform a given task.

There is hope even in public education: Next Generation Science Standards and Standards-Based Grading (SBG)  

Educators are waking up.  A coallition of educators from 25 states released in April 2013 the Next Generation Science Standards which combine content mastery with the much needed development of the practical skills (referred to as practices) used by scientists, engineers, and researchers in all fields.  Furthermore, the Next Generation Science Standards highlight concepts that cut across many traditionally -seperate disciplines.  This provides a great opportunity to deepen student's learning by introducing them to multiple, diverse applications of the concept.

Many teachers are also shifting to standards based grading under which students receive clear grades based on their ability to meet specific standards.  Under such systems students are empowered encouraged to try and fail and try again until they master it.  Even if students fail many times, if they master the standard (meaning they can consistently accomplish the relevant task or pass the test of the standard), there is no penalty for all the failures.  This approach

1. promotes discipline and consistent effort, 
2. provides freedom to tinker with what works best for you as a student and discover your optimal learning style
3. accepts the fact that people almost alwatys learn more from their failures than their successes
4. and rewards mastery regardless of how many failed attempts that were required to develop that mastery.

It is a sane approach.  It reflects the natural process of learning.  For example, when a child is learning to walk, their parents have to leave them on the ground so they can try.  No matter how many times they fall, the parent lets them try again, knowing they will learn.  The child is never scolded for failing, only encouraged and rewarded by the parents' enthusiasm and joy when they succeed.  Standards based grading makes so much sense compared to grading each day or weeks effort, participation, completed homework, and so on.  The goal isn't to have students who never feel discouraged or never get scraped up and decide to not try and walk today.  The goal is to help students learn and empower and prepare them for the rest of their life.  Educators must provide a place where it is safe to fail and learn.  Grades that focus on and directly reflect  students'proficiency with clearly-defined standards help create this natural learning environment.  Counting students failed attempts, low daily effort, or failure to routinely complete homework do not.  In fact such measures either lead students to rebel and think school is a bore or lead students into the false belief that their compliance with daily effort and routine homework requirements indicates that they have mastered a standard or skill.  

These grading schemes benefit zero students.  In the short-term they hurt the slow learners or incredibly innovative students who are not willing to comply to the homework or daily effort demands.  In the long-run they create "good students" who think they are incredibly well-prepared for the real-world employment because of their "good grades" but in reality have learned not how how to most efficiently gain skills and expertise but instead learned how to comply and game a system for maximum personal benefit with the minimum amount of personal effort.  I speak from both first-hand experience and from the perspective of the dozens of university professors I have interacted with over the years.  I was one of these "good students".  Let's realign grades in schools so that they reflect real ability and real standards.

Snippets from Design, Make, Play: Growing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators

Design, Make, Play

• Maker mindset and philosophy - You can choose to define yourself by what you can buy/consume or by what you can make.
• Makerspace.com
• Makezine.com
• YoungMakers.org
• Great learning environments should provide the following:

• Choice.  Learners choose and define the problem they want to solve or what they want to make within the setting you provide.  Consequently, the setting should be inviting and designed carefully to help reach a learning goal.  This is challenging but using their adaptation of Stanford University's d.school problem-framing framework will help a lot (on page 43).  I've made a Prezi "Generating Authentic Design Problems" from it that you are free to see and use
• Discovery and Accomplishment.  Learners get stuck and then unstuck, or in other words they reach the limits of their ability and have to learn more in order to move forward and accomplish their goal.  This process is a deeply ingrained part of human nature.  Babies try over and over again until they learn on their own how to walk, then run and jump.  Supervisers and parents should be careful not to step in and do something for the learner.  It may prevent the desired learning and growth.  Advice is appropriate especially if sought for by the learner or if you can tell that without it the learner will give up.  Like a young child proper support can accelerate the learning but it can easily be overdone.  Remember the moments when you've felt the thrill of discovery and facilitate the learner as he pursues the goal of personal discovery and accomplishment being careful not to inadvertently diminish it or take it from him.
• Inspiration.  This can come from examples put in the environment by the environment's creators but should over time consist primarily of the creations of others who have voluntarily left them as examples for others.
• Solidarity (meaning a sense of unity and purpose shared by the learners).  This manifests itself in the natural sharing of tips, ideas, and even projects between the learners.
• Squishy Circuits - playdough electricified (This looks like so much fun.  I am excited to try it myself)

• Go to the website to get recipes for conductive and resistive playdough.  (If you want some deionized or distilled water, ask your closest biology or chemistry lab.)
• This playdough can be used at all levels and may be especially helpful to teach basic circuits before moving students onto breadboards and wires where less of the conductive material of the circuit is visible.
•  RAFT - Resource Area For Teachers
• If you could sift the landfill and pull out all the usable discarded items from all kinds of businesses and put them in a warehouse, then provide idea sheets and training to help teachers use them in all kinds of hands-on activities, you would have made RAFT.
• Vuja de - the opposite of deja vu - the ability to see something you have seen many times, and see it as if for the first time.
• SciPlay's Guided Play Games
• Guided play games (GPG's) can actually cause the students to engage attentively, longer than merely a free play experience because there is a goal to achieve.  It's like taking the thrill of beating a level in a video game and combining that with real-world learning about acceleration or energy by allowing students to push a scooter cart or slide down a slide with sensors that take the physical measurements whenever they begin.

WholyGround and Scibrary

I've been busy as usual.  My newest accomplishments are an Etsy store, WholyGround, and the science library, Scibrary.   Having setup an Etsy store now, I look back and wonder why I didn't do it a couple years ago when I first started thinking about selling some of our excellent homemade goods.    Hopefully through the WholyGround store I can teach my growing children the value of the food we make (and they take somewhat for granted).

Anyway, all the sporadic thinking and planning for how to make a full-time WholyGround business wasn't in vain even though I'm not using it like I thought I would.  Instead I'm applying what I learned to the Scibrary, and hopefully I will soon become the first Scibrarian and have the pleasure of focusing full-time on bringing learning to life for middle and high school students.

The Irony of Gay Activists -- What Will it Mean to be a Boy Scout?

I think you could ask almost any American adult what a boy scout is and they could come up with things like camping, hiking, developing character, and so on.  This is because the scouting movement has created a strong definition for what it means to be a scout.  Years of effort by countless people who caught and shared Baden Powell's vision have created this strong definition, but today many people including some scout councils are asking that the definition be changed.  The debate hinges around the oath taken by each scout and leader and recited at regular scout functions.

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

 Specifically, the debate questions what it means to be morally straight.  This brings us to the irony of gay activists.  They preach tolerance;, however, they are not tolerant of the long-established definitions or meanings of things such as marriage or the Boy Scouts of America.  

What are the consequences of changing definition?  Let's suppose that the BSA decides after years of defending one of the fundamental tenets of the organization (specifically that morally straight means you are not homosexual) to open the organization to gay scouts and gay leaders.  From that moment and forward the meaning of being a boy scout or supporting boy scouts will have changed.  Suddenly, the years of defining morally straight to be heterosexual would be broken and the continuity the Boy Scouts of America has provided over the years would be fractured.  

Will this serve to build up civilization or does it serve to break down civilization?  Civilization is built upon language, and language depends upon words having specific meanings.  Examine the history of the word gay with this question in mind.  Almost all writing from the early 1900's uses gay to mean carefree and joyful, but today it is never used that way and instead means homosexual or something really lame or stupid.  This creates a discontinuity, confuses the rising generation and requires that they remember how and when the definition changed, and keep the time of a certain writing in mind as they read it in order to properly understand the meaning.  This change is a deconstructive act that represents not the building up of civilization but actually a small fracture in civilization.  The historical meaning of gay which endured for thousands of years has been completely changed over the last couple generations.

 

The irony is that gay activists while demanding "tolerance" are intolerant of the historical definitions and meanings of words, organizations, acts, and things upon which our civilization has been built up.  Rather than demand that what it means to be morally straight in the Boy Scouts of America be changed, why not create a similar organization in which to honor the gay boy and through which to create an the desired meaning.   Wouldn't this be true tolerance?

I realize that some with strong emotional ties to the subject will feel grateful for my stance and that others will want to label me as a "hater".  Please do not misunderstand.  Though I declare that homosexuality is a sin and is defined as such by an unchangeable God, I am in favor of tolerance.  We are all part of humanity and should work to build it up.  Let us put aside our arguing and rationally work together to build up society through tolerance of one another and especially through tolerance of the meanings and definitions upon which today's civilization has been built up.  

Be creative.  

Be inventive.  

Instead of breaking things that have established meanings 

by changing their meaning,

make what is needed for the present and future  

Auburn's Boshell Diabetes Research Day

To me the research day's most interesting presentation was a very simple experiment done by Auburn's Michael W. Greene.  He fed mice either low fat or high fat diets containing a mix of fats (33% lard, 33% butterfat, 33% Crisco) typical of the American diet.  These groups were subdivided and half were also given water containing sucrose and fructose comparable to drinking soda pop.  Can you guess which ones started having liver damage and obesity?

After two weeks the mice on both high fat and high sugar had problems, but after 12 weeks the mice on high fat with plain water also had problems.

During the question and answer section he said that the type of fat has everything to do with the outcome.

My take on it all, is that you should eat healthy fats as much as our conscious dictates but limit the Crisco, butterfat and probably the lard as well.     

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Last week, my wife and I watched the Patrick Stewart (Capt. Kirk from Star Trek) version of Charles Dickins classic A Christmas Carol.  For a week now I have wanted to say Merry Christmas to my colleaques and others.  Now that it's officially December, it seems more appropriate than ever.

Merry Christmas!   God bless us everyone!

My Review of Roku LT Streaming Player

Originally submitted at Roku

Roku lowest priced high-definition streaming player.

Roku LT Streaming Player

Free BYU TV, Mormon Channel, and others

By Will the science professor from Auburn, AL on 12/1/2012

 

5out of 5

Pros: Pandora Radio, Byu Tv, Simple Controls, Pc Monitor Becomes A Tv, Free Tv Radio Stations, Mormon Channel

Best Uses: Church Broadcasts, Old Cartoons, Pandora Radio

Describe Yourself: Casual User

We originally purchased the Roku LT to watch the general conferences and Mormon Messages from our church: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We were amazed by the quantity and quality of content available on the Mormon Channel for Roku. Since buying it we have enjoyed Pandora Radio, an occosional old cartoon (there are some free channels with them), and some PBS content.

Now that we have the Roku, my wife and I have a TV that we feel comfortable leaving the kids around. We control what channels are on the Roku and thereby what content our children are exposed to. Until now we have avoided TV entirely, opting to simply watch movies on our computer rather than risk exposing kids to much of the dross out there on the air waves and cables. Thanks to Roku our HD computer monitor doubles as a family-friendly TV. Since Roku pulls content over our existing internet connection, there have been no additional service fees for us, just the one-time purchase.

(legalese)

Your muscles should be your best health friends.

Choosing my muscles over my car...

Since my college days I've made it a point to wrangle exercise into my normal daily schedule.  Since each week usually throws a few abnormal days at me, I at least get 3 or 4 good sessions of exercise each week.  Now that I am married, have four children, and am still in school trying to become a professor (though I'm finally at the last stage before being a professor: the postdoc.-- as in postdoctoral! Hurray!), I sympathize with everyone who is having a hard time getting exercise because of the many daily demands they face. As we moved to the small university town where I do postdoctoral research related to diabetes and obesity, I made a choice to sell my car and bike to work.  This has been a 100% effective approach at getting 5-6 good 20 minute or more workouts into my schedule. Fortunately, I have a loving wife and good friends who help me out when it rains.  Here are the reasons why it's been so effective.  I'm too proud to bum rides off of friends all the time (but not so proud that I won't bum 2 or maybe 3 rides a week).  Next, I love my wife too much to inconvenience her frequently by requesting to be picked up or driving our only vehicle to work.  Last, I absolutely love the feel of the wind on a cool morning as I zip effortlessly down a hill.  Since the closest bust stop in the town is 3-4 miles away, I have to put in some miles on my bike even if I use the bus.

Before I explain how my muscles are my best friends you need to keep in mind one important fact:  Extra sugar is converted by the body into fat.  Consequently, high levels of fat in your blood generally signal the body to stop taking up sugar.

My best health friends...

As I've carried on this exercise routine and dug into diabetes/obesity research, I've come to think of my muscles as my best health friends. They burn up calories even when I'm resting. More importantly they absorb and store almost all the simple carbohydrates I eat.  Then when needed those calories are readily available.  Furthermore, my muscles will --thanks to the endurance training from my zero-emission form of commuting-- continue to take up glucose for storage even in the presence of excess fat in the blood stream.  Recently, Phielix et al. showed that trained muscles only decrease glucose uptake by 29% in the presence of free fatty acids in the blood stream versus a 63% decrease in glucose uptake for individuals with untrained muscles.  The current explanation for the decreased uptake even for trained muscles is that the excess fat results in a switch from using glucose for energy to using fat for energy, but these trained muscles still continue taking up glucose for storage even though the individuals hadn't done any exercise in the past 2 days.  

What you should be concerned about...

This decrease in glucose uptake (63% for untrained muscles, 29% for trained muscles) in the face of i.v. insulin stimulation is a measure of insulin resistance which is a huge problem in our society.  Insulin resistance is at the heart of diabetes and obesity because it makes it hard for your body to maintain low blood sugar when consuming simple carbohydrates such as sweets, breads, potatoes, rice and so on.  High blood sugar levels cause serious damage to other organs such as the eyes,  body over time, not to mention providing a ready source of energy for bacteria and yeast.  By getting out of the sedentary lifestyle and using your muscles regularly in endurance-type activity, you can relax and feel only half as concerned about indulging in the many treats so readily available in our society.  Let your muscles be your best health friends.  Use them or eliminate all but an occosional simple carbohydrate from your daily diet, but this topic will have to wait for another day.

Your friend,

Will

Phielix E, Meex R, Ouwens DM, Sparks L, Hoeks J, Schaart G, et al High Oxidative Capacity Due to Chronic Exercise Training Attenuates Lipid-Induced Insulin Resistance. Diabetes [Internet]. 2012 Sep. 20;61(10):2472-2478. Available from: http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/doi/10.2337/db11-1832

Can we eat to starve cancer?  YES!

http://www.ted.com/talks/william_li.html

Dr. William Li provides scientific evidence that our diet can be our best preventative and even treatment for cancer.  The surprise is that the same tactic also helps starve fat cells preventing obesity in mice and most likely in humans as well.

Let's get what we pay for! Open access to publicly funded research!

Right now I am in the midst of trying to persuade various journals to publish my research so that I can finish my PhD.  I never knew how picky journals can be about what they publish.  I'm now intimately acquainted with it, and it is one of the worst parts of science.

Let me explain.  Scientists do research almost entirely through taxpayer dollars.  Then the scientists must 1) pay the journals in order to publish and 2) serve as reviewers for the journals without any monetary compensation while the journals are free to A) charge hefty fees for access and B) create revenue from advertisements and infomercials.  IT IS LUDICROUS LUCRATIVENESS! and it actually gets in the way of being able to publish scientific findings.

The best thing that we can do about it is to simply make a law that requires that you, the taxpayers, get what you have been paying for.  The publications which scientists (and other scholars as well) freely write and actually pay to publish should be freely available to everyone so that you the taxpayers can tap into the findings that you have paid for.  Many journals are already providing open access but the most prestigious journals are not and the newer open access journals are having a hard time competing.  Let's change all that and pressure our congressman until they make open access the law here in the USA.  Fortunately, the movement is already organized for you.   Help it out at

taxpayeraccess.org 

On Body Odors and Sugar Consumption

My wife and I have over the past 2-3 years shifted our diets away from refined sugar and more towards whole grains and vegetables (especially green leafy ones like chard and kale).  The Easter celebration got me to eat too much candy but I learned something fascinating from it.

Monday I biked home from work.  Usually this 20 minutes of mild exercise causes perspiration but no noticeable odor.  This time I started smelling bad.  The correlation between all the sugar I had consumed over the past 48 hours and the increased activity of the odor-causing bacteria on my body was strong.  I had to investigate. 

My suspicion was confirmed by a paper from 1927 in which researchers were investigating how sugar in sweat affects eczema (link to  publication).  Your body excretes sugar in your sweat.

Five Frugal Sisters: RawData

TheRawData.com

Fascinating research company that for most people is simply just a way of getting a smart phone at a great discount ($40/mo).

I like to give credit where it's due. I first saw this here.

Five Frugal Sisters: RawData: This is one of the things I'm grateful for this year. A few months ago we were exploring phone options for my husband's from-home accountin...

Palm Pixi Plus = the poor man's iPhone or iPod Touch i.e. the best cheap alternative to the mainstream smartphones

An extremely frugal, geeky friend of mine bought 4 of these Palm Pixi Plus phones from Amazon (≤$40) so I knew they had to be really special.  I got one, and it certainly is.  


How to get a poor man's iPhone or iPod Touch

1.  Purchase a Verizon Palm Pixi Plus phone on amazon ($40 or less).  
2.  Follow the instructions available plain version here or scarier version here to activate it on PagePlusCellular.com (which uses the Verizon network and is therefore compatible with the phone).  Buying prepaid minutes on page plus, I spend only $10 every 3 months (their minimum requirement).  
3.  Update the operating system (OS).  I used webOS doctor, but it may be possible to download the upgrade via the phone's wifi connection.


Do not activate it or talk to Verizon about setting up the phone.  It's a waist of time.  They are required to sell you a data plan and will not let you do pay-as-you-go or prepaid or simply activate it to use the phone like an iPod Touch.


4.  Don't forget to deactivate the data (see the instructions link above) and frequently check to make sure the phone doesn't say 3G.  It shouldn't.  At least mine hasn't except for right after I upgraded the OS.

Enjoy it for 

     email, calendar, contacts (via Google, microsoft exchange, and others)

     music, movies (which can be downloaded to the phone via the USB connection)

     snapping pictures or recording movies

     playing games

     phone calls, texting,

    Mormon Channel app (free from the app store)

    LDS Gospel library

    LDS Tools
    Facebook (free from app store)
    Pandora radio (free from app store)

The above 2 apps come as .ipk files and can be installed with the webOS quick install, wosqi.

1.  Download wosqi onto your computer. 

2.  In the app launcher of the Pixi type in "upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart", this will reveal the developer mode app.  Open it then enable developer mode.

3.  Run the wosqi on your desktop or laptop computer, connect the Pixi via USB and select "Just Charge"

4.  Install the .ipk files using wosqi

5.  Repeat step 2 and disable developer mode if you feel concerned about your security.

For greater detail see here

If something goes dreadfully wrong, don't worry they've made webOS doctor to restore the phone to functionality.  It's also a good way to update the OS on the Pixi before setting it up with apps, email accounts, and such.