Ideation Structures

Ideation structures are critical elements of teacher planning

The one part of this process that struck me the most was the lack of definitive planning structures for projects. At the beginning of this process I sent a whole school email and asked if anyone had project planning resources that I could use. I was hoping for gold but instead received the oh so boring backwards planner. The HTH Backwards planner feels as inspiring as a form at the DMV. It is linear, boxy and assumes that you already know what you’re doing. I however am not a liner planner, very much dislike filling in boxes and most definitely only know part of what I am doing. It was by pure coincidence that my Ms. Gina showed me the HTH PBL Design Camp presentation. This presentation was part of a workshop that HTH uses when coaching other schools for how to transition into a PBL model. In this workshop it showed how to ideate, plan and execute a project. Nowhere in this presentation was there a backwards planner. It got me thinking, why have I never seen this? I received my credential through HTH, went through Induction and have attended multiple Odysseys (HTH teacher orientation). In all that time I have only heard of the backwards planner.

Project ideation feels illusive, mostly because ideation is connected with execution. In Levitt’s (2002) article reviewing the connection between creativity and innovation titledCreativity is Not Enough, he states, “All in all, ideation is relatively abundant. It is its implementation that is more scarce” I don’t doubt that we as teachers can ideate and develop beautiful projects, my question is how do we support those ideas with structures that help bring them to fruition?

Based on previous project planning experiences with my coworkers I felt it was important to make a clear distinction between ideation and planning. In the ideation phase no idea is set in stone, parts can move, be added or subtracted, or rewritten. Ideation for PBL is unique, there is a criteria an idea needs to meet that makes it a good project. When using the PBL Design Camp structure for project ideation and creation I found that it was easier to mold ideas to fit the criteria for a good PBL project. Providing a framework for collaboration with colleagues by using a “yes, and” structure during the process allowed for ideas to go through iterations and be processed by multiple perspectives. In addition to the Design Camp structure, Ms. Gina, Ms. Frost and I created working documents that captured our ideas when we were not together. From this document I was able to create the visual flow chart (Fig 5) of the project. Similar to how the students responded to easy to read visual aids, teachers worked well together when the ideation phase of project planning was made visual.

Once we had the main idea of what the project would be about and look like we moved into the planning stage. During this stage more structured traditional documentation was created. This is where activities for each class were sorted out and how the traditional learning objectives would accompany the project.