Co-Designing a New Future for Education
At the end of May, the Service Design in Education network #SDinED held two workshops to explore the future of education and co-design what an EduJam could look like. The online events were well attended with over a 100 participants. The network has come a long way since it came together in June 2019 and indeed will be celebrating its first birthday on 25th June 2020 — to which you are invited — see below!
At the first meeting at Dundee & Angus College, the network enthusiasts agreed to come out with a big bang event in partnership with V&A in Dundee. The vision was to co-design a cooperative fun weekend filled with experimentation, innovation and prototyping of what our education might achieve if we all get our heads together. The inspiration came from the concept of the Global Service Jam that has spread across the world and brought about many innovations into private and public services. But more importantly, as Adam Lawrence, who is one of the co-founders of these 48-hour life changing events, says: “…the jams create innovators” (apparently Adam’s friend says that, not Adam). The experience of an intensive collaboration with the focus on doing, not talking, has positively influenced mindsets of participants who will never approach problems and challenges in the same way.
So we wanted to bring this jamming concept to education and we were keen to involve our education community, and beyond, in helping us co-design the EDUJAM recipe. We invited a true ‘Master Chef’ — Andy de Vale from WorkVisible — to help us get our heads around this concept at our virtual event on 22nd May 2020. We were excited to also welcome Adam who shared the Global Jam story and from then on, it was simply “a kind of magic” that has been captured on a padlet board and beautifully facilitated and documented by Andy.
This unique co-creation and emphasis on what you, yes you, and you and you! wish to experience, how you, yes, you and you! want to learn and innovate our education system and what we, yes WE, this one year old baby #SDinED wish to create for you in the EduJam came to life and the ideas were endless and full of inspiration! We have tried to sum up what we thought was really important and we will keep pondering and digesting this rather large pot of JAM…
- Don’t be a Zombie
We all agreed that we definitely didn’t want to be Zombie participants. Wasn’t it a nice counselling session to be able to say it out loud!
- No more “Lifeless people delivering lifeless content, no interaction, no fun”
- No more “No time for human needs”
- No more “Pompous speakers who shoot down people’s questions”
- No more “Loads of jargon nobody explains”
2. Flipping a Zombie participant into a JAMMER
With Andy’s inspiration we did it, we turned the Zombie conference world into something we all want to be a part of because:
- We will “Burn it! — Burn the old system on a BBQ with sausages. — GO GLOBAL. Involve young people and all learners. — Learn from each other globally around a campfire.”
- We will “Be clear to ourselves — what is our message? — Attract the right audience, those who are engaged or engage-able.”
- We will “Change hearts and minds — Build a set of activities, breakouts, with the right variety to bring it alive to people.”
- We will “Play to speaker’s strengths — assign tasks to bring out the best in people, nobody will be great at everything (ie public speaking, running the technology, etc.)”
- We will bring “flexibility around delivery — build a bear approach — pick and mix. What works for individual, build your own agenda”
- We will introduce a “Jargon Buster — Acronyms are disabling — short but wide-reaching campaign to remind people to speak in a COMMON language!”
3. Mission impossible
If you weren’t there with us, you may think — this is mission impossible. Well, yes, a bit. This one year old scallywag #SDinED, even though very much alive and kicking, needs some mates to hang out with. So you advised us to get: “A Jam Crew — Having a crew of helpers, with their own expertise, bringing their own value and helping run the best digital-edu-jam ever!”
Yeah!!! That sounds fun!
You really made it clear to us that your vision is to:
- “Co-Create the future with students”
- “Take the opportunity right now to flip round educational delivery and content by creating a movement that will gather momentum as it moves forward.”
- “Remember all users, including the staff.”
So we believe we can do it the DIGI way — we can DIGIJAM!
Next Steps…..
We hope this has given you enough ingredients to get cooking and join us at our 1st anniversary celebratory event on 25th June when we will champion the part that storytelling plays in service design and, apart from partying, we will also announce the JAM Crew roles.
We look forward to welcoming you on board. Do join us, even if just for a bit of blether….(we were born in Scotland after all!).
A Tale of Celebration: Storytelling with Service Design in Education — https://bit.ly/SDEDStory
PS: no ZOMBIES please…
Radka, Katie and Jean
The co-founders of #SDinED
