We participated in Global Service Jam this weekend!

Friday, 6pm. We met on the 9th floor of the old Toronto Star building at 1 Yonge street. The weekend began with a chill in the air. But just beyond the elevator doors was the headquarters for Global Service Jam Toronto, which emanated the subdued chatter and warmth of about 20-30 eager designers, students, professionals, and general keeners who want to change the world.

At 6:30, after introductions and getting to know each other, the global headquarters revealed the theme in an entertaining video. This year's theme was simply "grow." Brainstorming around this idea, the team I was on was drawn to the idea of introducing complex or real world problems to children. How can we start growing their minds to start solving the complex problems of tomorrow? And how do you do it in a way that helps them get on the path to their life's passion?

The process

What a rollercoaster ride... at first, our idea was a platform - a shared virtual space for kids and teachers to play with ideas around things they were learning in school. Then we realized we needed a service for Service Design Jam; the platform was great to prototype, but we were thinking too small.

We were inspired by a TED talk by Sugata Mitra, suggested by a girl in the room named Alex. We thought, "Why not introduce self-organized learning environments to the Ontario school boards?" and "What if we delivered it in a pop-up school that shows up randomly around Ontario and disrupts classrooms in the middle of the day to shake up their thinking?"

Evidently, we were now thinking too big. We did a little research by interviewing middle school teachers. I went home Saturday night for dinner with my family - my mom, a veteran, with 43 teaching years, and my brother, a relatively new teacher, currently supplying in a couple of different boards. The response was unanimous: leave teaching to teachers. Stop disrupting our teaching time. It's all been done before. (Just a summary of the barriers - my mom loved the idea, as long as it worked with curriculum objectives and as long as it was voluntary to those special teachers who could help champion and pilot the new way of learning.)

So we regrouped on Sunday, now with less than three hours to work out what, exactly, we were designing. We went back to the beginning, with one twist: our focus was on teachers instead of students. So we centered our service around them - we partner with teachers, develop what's inside the pop-up school with their curriculum objectives and expertise, and introduce design thinking and self-organized learning environments using teachers as facilitators.

Our service: TEaM with Teachers

The latest "T"echnology; safe spaces and inspiring "E"nvironments; support and new "M"ethods for Ontario teachers to help them pass their learning objectives with flying colours.

Why? We believe that by teaming up with teachers to introduce new ways of teaching and learning, we can inspire student’s curiosity re-ignite their sense of discovery, and help students develop a passion for learning and finding their life’s quest.

Tired & Contented

It's been both a very invigorating and exhausting weekend. It's going to take awhile to absorb everything we did, and the unique way we came to our final prototype, and consider whether this idea is something we can move forward in any way in the future.

In any case, I'm looking forward, more than ever, to GovJam Toronto now that I've experienced the process.  If I can do it, with no design background, anybody can. This is gonna be great!