Week 10 - Real World Problem Solving, Crowdsourcing and Entrepreneurship

The topics for this week's session all interwove really nicely with each other. We talked about problem solving in the real world, or social action, and examined some fantastic young entrepreneurs who had built innovative start up companies to really try and make a difference in the world. We also looked at crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, which has made ideas like this eminently more achievable.

We started off by looking at something called a Lean Canvas. This is basically a pared down version of a business plan that allows you to do an overview and think through whether a business idea is likely to be viable or not. This is a tool that is adaptable to education as a means to think through a change proposal you are considering implementing. It is a valuable document that explores things like people affected, time and resources needed, upkeep required and defining exactly what it is you're hoping to achieve. We are going to use this as a basis for our next assignment so it will be a useful thing to explore.

We went on to look at some companies that have social action or enterprise at their core. We defined these as organisations that apply commercial strategies to maximise improvements in human and environmental well-being - which may include maximising social impact rather than profits for external stakeholders. A great example of this is Toms shoes. I had heard of them before but didn't really know what it was about. It is a pretty inspiring example and a great idea, check it out below if you haven't already:

Another incredible example is the young boy who developed an ocean cleaning array and a plan to clean our oceans:

A key message tonight was that kids do not have to wait until they leave school to pursue these ideas, innovations and passions. They can do it now! If we think back to the 21st Century Learning Rubrics from the early weeks of this course, real world problem solving and innovation is one of the key skills that should be developed in the classroom. Real world problems:

• Are experienced by real people
• Have solutions for a specific, plausible audience other than the educator as grader
• Have specific, explicit contexts
• If students are using data to solve a problem, they use actual data

Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing

This is a great wee video that outlines these two ideas really nicely. As it says, the concept of collaborating and turning to a large group for help is not new, however these days we are connected globally like never before and we can reach a wide audience so much more easily.

I knew a bit about crowdfunding already and have participated in a few fundraising campaigns online. One main message with this method of raising money is that it is only the first step. You need to think really carefully about the sustainability of your idea once it is up and running.

Crowdsourcing I knew less about and was really excited to see some of the ideas that are out there. We examined some different websites that are drawing on people's skills from all over the world. Two of my favourites were Zooniverse and Open IDEO.

Zooniverse is a fascinating concept - it is a platform for collaborative volunteer research. You can participate in genuine research projects across many different scientific fields. I tried to spot chimpanzees on a wildlife cam and had a go at finding greek characters on an ancient papyrus. Fantastic potential for linking with learning in the classroom!

Open IDEO is a global community that solve real-world problems by collaborating through all stages of the process. You can get a great overview by watching this short video. Such exciting stuff!

Finally we finished the night with this week's 'fun bit'! We were introduced to the game Market Share which is kind of like a grown up, super intense version of Monopoly. It is designed to introduce you to the principles of growing a business. When we first started to listen to the explanation and look at the instructions I was completely overwhelmed and thought it looked far too challenging for that late at night, but once we got started it was easier to get your head around it and turned out to be a lot of fun! Well, if you like losing spectacularly that is. Our group got into two teams and it turned into a religious showdown between the God Squad (catholic school teachers) and the Heathens (us state school folk). I'm not sure whether we just didn't sacrifice enough goats but we got completely and utterly trounced! Fair play to the God Squad who had a far more successful strategy and were definitely the better team on the night. In fact they cleaned up across the whole class by miles! We had a lot of laughs but it was actually quite an effective way to learn a bit about what is involved in developing a business. Fun times!