As Chief Innovation Officer at Leadership Public Schools, my first task was to jump-start technology innovation directly at the high school level. One of the objectives was to create a stimulating environment that would spark the imagination of students in urban, low income neighborhoods around the San Francisco Bay Area. Oh, and did I mention I only had a starting budget of $300?
March of 2011, I was given an empty room and 15 kids from all grades and backgrounds at the Leadership Public Schools College Park Campus. Over the next three months, we transformed a typical 1940's style classroom into a "Career and College Ready Room" and created the "Young Innovators Club". We got people to donate equipment, laptops, video cameras, furniture, paint, windsurfer sails - whatever we could scrape together.
It was a very accelerated experiment, pushing the boundaries of students to think rapidly and out of the box, sometimes making a brochure and a video (and learning the skills to make the products) all in one afternoon.
The first meeting of the Young Innovators Club discussing what's possible and what could be done. They were interested in 3 things: Facebook, Facebook and Facebook. So we decided to create videos, still photos and stories to upload to the Group's Facebook page.
The video group of the Young Innovators Club.
Google graciously donated 150 beta Chromebooks to Leadership Public Schools. The Young Innovators Club received the first bunch and quickly got them ready for dissemination to other classrooms. They quickly became the 'go to' technology of choice for the group as it was the first time most of the students had access to a laptop. Suddenly the World become a much more interesting place.
Long after the bell rang for end of session, students were still working on their projects.
Charrette day: The Young Innovators Club was designed to test, research and think tank a whole bunch of ideas very quickly. Students would have an idea presented to them, and they would apply an intense amount of rigor to the likes of a Rand Corporation.
Young Innovators interviewing potential candidates for new projects.
The Young Innovators Club sponsored a school wide logo competition for the coming year. The winning logo would be put on a T-Shirt and would become part of the official school uniform. This was the winning logo, the "LPS Knights" at College Park.
