Last week, I hosted a group of high school students from Kanagawa Prefecture for the first on-campus YCISL program since 2019. And it was the first “Popcorn with Colin” session at Stanford; previously, PwC had only been online through Zoom in response to the pivot to remote education.

In this PwC, the focus was on Creativity, Uncertainty, & Real-World Problem-Solving. When I was ideating in preparation, I thought about two aspects of creativity application that sets Stanford-style education apart. The first is the concept of uncertainty – which I learned most when teaching environmental toxicology (ETox is full of uncertainty…and risk). Uncertainty was also a talking point early in YCISL taking Geert Hofstede cultural dimension examples from the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell (it was one of the books in the Stanford freshman orientation Three Books program in 2009). So, this PwC started on the topic of uncertainty – in everyday as well as academic terms.

The second concept introduced in the PwC was Real-World Problem-Solving. I recalled examples from various Stanford environmental courses where problem assignments are designed with intentional incompleteness – just like in the real-world where there are numerous gaps or questionable information. The idea was for students to learn to make guesses or estimates to come up with justified and plausible solutions. This approach to academic coursework aligns with high-level research where knowledge extensions and connections are made and tested.

With the above concepts set in a Stanford context, the students were then pulled into the YCISL-style of playful creativity. We started with the fast thinking exercises (“What do cows drink?”) then moved into the 30 circles exercise to demonstrate imaginative agility as well as transfer from mind to paper. We ended our creativity fun-fest with the Human Knot exercise to immersively showcase group problem-solving.

To complete the circle, I introduced a variation of the Design Sprint exercise just completed in the Sustainability Design Thinking course; partly to share what happened in an actual Stanford course, and partly to get the students to apply creativity, uncertainty, & real-world problem solving to a forward-thinking problem that may affect even their own future. In my view, this turned out to be very resonating as it brought in some of my latest thinking & experiences, & tasked the students with brainstorming along a timeline. The temporal flow was sweet.

This was a great way to get back to on-campus YCISL activity.

Design thinking can be applied to creating project titles. Actually, project titles should be created using design thinking. Let’s apply YCISL principles to design thinking project titles.

1. Divergent-Convergent Thinking. We can apply the divergent-convergent thinking method to start. Make a list of all the key words from the project. Next, select only up to 5 of the most important key words. These are the words that most differentiate your project from others. These words will very likely appear in the final project title.
2. Feature List. From the 5 most important key words, mark those on the short list that are also hook words; that is, the two or three words that are most likely to catch attention. These should reflect the primary features of the project. These words will be the initial candidates as subject words (as opposed to object words) in the project title.
3. Elevator Pitch. Using one of the nine components (grab, problem, solution, team, opportunity, competitive advantage, model, promise and ask) that we coach in the YCISL elevator pitch exercise as a theme, form a preliminary project title using the key words making sure to position the hook words as subjects.
4. Storyboarding.  Add filler words to the preliminary project title so that it flows and makes sense. Keep filler words to a minimum. Re-arrange the project title so that the project title has that just right feel.
5. Check for Positivity. Avoid disengagement from focusing on a negative impression in the project title. Phrase for positive language and story.
6. Rapid Prototyping & Iteration. Create at least three project title candidates. Do this by returning to any of the preceding steps.
7. Readiness. Check that the selected project title is both precise and accurate. A precise project title should have a well-defined and focused scope. An accurate project title highlights the most important work and findings in the project. Remove any bits that make the project title imprecise or inaccurate.
8. EQ. When checking for precision and accuracy, consider your intended audience and whether the project title fits their domain. Would they want to find out more about your project from your project title? Does the title demonstrate self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and social management?
9. Final Check. Remember that the project title is going to show up in several situations, and you should make sure it works for each. Situations may include a proposal, a report, a talk, a poster presentation, a video presentation, a newspaper article, a journal publication, on your resume, in web search engine results, in a group discussion, & more. Is your project title amenable and adaptable for the situations you are likely to encounter?

Some of the best models for title creation can be found in TED Talk titles.

Example 1: “Schools Kill Creativity.” The title of the quintessential TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson. Zero filler words. “Kill” as the hook word. And written as a Problem. There is deep negativity in that hook word and overall statement, and some time (in years) after the video was published, the title was changed to “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” which adds a filler word, changes the theme to a Grab (asking for an opinion), and makes the story less negative. This adaptive change may be the reason why this particular TED Talk continues to be so popular and impactful.

Example 2: “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator.” This is the title of the TED Talk that most YCISL students tell me that they have watched. Why is that? Let’s analyze it. The title covers the who, where and when of our asking questions design thinking method: Inside -> Where, Mind -> What, and Who -> Master Procrastinator. There is an EQ aspect of awareness and an implied promise of action with regards to this condition. The word “master” suggests a solution as well as a focus on a particular character who is part of an interesting story. The “Master Procrastinator” is the clear subject of this title and the “Mind” is the object. Few filler words. The hook word is “procrastinator” as that highlights something that many of us have personal experience with, if not a habit.

Epilogue. I wrote this article after my latest experience with reviewing project proposals for a science fair. I found that many projects failed OOBE by having project titles that needed improvement. Many chemistry and environmental science project proposals had project titles that over-promised and under-delivered by suggesting an impact outside their actual scope. Then there were computer science and electrical engineering projects that over-stated their depth and rigor. For most of these projects, I had to request that the project proposal include a rationale statement so that it would clarify the scope and purpose for the project idea – which I would then check for alignment with the project title.

Last week was the 2023 Synopsys Science & Technology Championship in San Jose, CA. I was invited to volunteer for Grand Prize (High School) judging, Category (Middle School) Judging, and Check-in. It was my first time doing check-in and it was fun being a trainee. I’ve done the judging before. But this time, I was tasked with selecting a project for a Special Award in the Environmental area, and I learned a few things. The following are impressions I got from the project and student I selected for the Special Award, and reflections on what influenced the decision with respect to YCISL ideas.

• “I thought the idea had creative and personally connected origins.” Part of creativity depends on what on what others are doing at this instance in time. I had reviewed many Machine Learning projects and none had problem-solving depth. I also had reviewed numerous environmental sustainability projects that made over-reaching claims and promises. The winning project had a simple creative idea and involved a rigorous scientific approach and process. During the judging interview, I checked that there was a personal interest in the subject which in conversation expanded to similar applications. In YCISL, we have the elevator pitch exercise where students design a creatively persuasive one-on-one discussion.
• “I felt a sense of authentic curiosity and a research question with good scope (not too small, not too big).” Beyond the curiosity that is expected at such an event, an authenticity in the inspiration and motivation helps distinguish the project idea. Then it also helps to frame the idea with a scope that is Goldilocks-“just right” so I don’t wonder why there is such poor alignment between the promise, problem and solution. The winning project had vivid vision that fit the scope and performed actions that made the vision interesting.
• “The project poster was clear and displayed an end to end research study. There was scientific methodology involved that required independent scholarly learning, skill and mastery. The narrative was focused and compelling (I really wanted to know the outcome and where it could lead to).” Poster presentations need to be balanced from end to end for effective storytelling. For me, that includes starting with an idea that has grab, and concludes with a bibliography that gains my trust in the project quality.
• “I did have a 1-on-1 meeting with him at the poster where he presented project highlights…I found his oral presentation presence and delivery to be perhaps the best I saw today (it helped that we were both interested in sports).” For me, there were three opportunities for this project to impress me including the proposal review, the pre-interview poster read, and the interview-based discussion. The most critical one in this case was the poster read. I may not have been as keenly attentive during the interview if the poster hadn’t been so impressive. Still, a successful interview was still required for me to conclude that this project and student researcher was distinctly outstanding and deserving of the Special Award. The student did not rush and, as I recall, practiced active listening.

To wrap up this entry, I am going to list the top three basic dealbreakers that I generally observed at the event:

• Bibliography. A weak or absent bibliography erases credibility.
• Over-promise, Under-deliver. Un-managed expectations reduces believability. Some project titles were not refined enough.
• Science. A scholarly mastery of science at the grade-level or higher needs to be apparent. This is reflected in preparatory, methodology and analysis components.

“Envision an education where sustainability is a core academic subject. Imagine students empowered by global sustainability actions. The NIFTI Roundtable 2021 will bring together education stakeholders to brainstorm and shape a platform of curricula, courses and experiential learning programs to re-define how we learn about sustainability.”

The first NIFTI program (August 14 – October 2, 2020) was a seminar series coupled with a group discussion. In an idea for a followup activity, a NIFTI Roundtable was developed where there would be an organizing committee comprising a small select group of invited NIFTI students. The seed idea was to reverse the students’ roles as audience to organizers, and provide a leadership opportunity. The initial scope called for the students to invite an audience comprising students and educators from their school. The purpose of the roundtable would be to share viewpoints and experiences on a sustainability topic.

We had our organizing committee kick-off meeting on December 18, 2021. There were initially 4 students on the committee. We floated topics that would interest us as well as our prospective audience. At the second meeting on January 15, 2022, the topic of Sustainability in Education eventually stuck. We then discussed organizing timelines, roles and the agenda. We decided to have a Zoom meeting instead of a webinar mainly to allow for stronger engagement.

Progress on organization was slow with students managing with the disruptions to their schooling caused by Covid-19-related responses. After more than 8 months of intermittent progress and passed deadlines, the NIFTI Roundtable was scheduled as part of the Fall 2021 NIFTI program. The audience became the students in that NIFTI program and the panelists comprised educators and students. That firmed up the event date and audience. We then focused on the agenda to make it attractive and fresh.

We had the NIFTI Roundtable on December 3, 2021. We learned a lot about what the educators and students at Sekolah Bogor Raya were doing in the area of sustainability in their school environment. Several students shared their experiences in organizations addressing sustainability. Committee members served as hosts and engaged the panelists and audience in dialog. We had a Mentimeter poll. We had Zoom breakout groups for social networking. We had a brainstorming session. We created an Instagram hashtag so students could post ideas for educational activities on sustainability.

While the organization and delivery of this event was not easy, it was a worthwhile effort to bring us awareness about opportunities to get sustainability to a top tier level in education. The journey has just begun. And we hope others will join this effort to elevate sustainability in our lives.

Epilogue: We are planning on publishing an e-book on this experience. The organizing committee has been invited to contribute chapters covering the organizational effort and event notes. I also plan to author a YCISL White Paper on my reflections about what I learned about Sustainability in Education from this activity.

NIFTI 2.0

Last weekend, we kicked off the second year of the NIFTI program. I am calling it NIFTI 2.0 – The Sustainable Futures Initiative. Our primary focus will be on sustainability design thinking. There are many situations where sustainability design thinking is absent. The California water crisis is one.

The YCISL program sees sustainability design thinking as comprising smart programming, debugging and release to early adopters as prototypes. We will coach students to get divergent-convergent thinking to be instinctual and an essential ingredient of their emotional intelligence practice.

The new NIFTI will be less about career guidance, and more about upgraded and upgradable thinking skills. We will pollinate NIFTI with exercises from the ITW program so that students can envision what the next-generation of leadership needs to do – and how to do it.

If we were to give the current NIFTI group of students the challenge of solving the California water crisis, how would the divergent-convergent thinking process go? I think first we will have a long list of people who would be accountable. We will then have a comprehensive list of reasons for the water crisis perception. On the convergent side, we would design innovative solutions – perhaps a trio that get all stakeholders to realize we have a glass half full and the challenge is to get it more full, and not prevent it from getting emptier.

One of the premises I presented in the introduction to NIFTI 2.0 is “Sustainability has a PR problem” and that this explains why sustainability is stuck (stuck in the negatives as Alison Ledgerwood puts it) – and why it is so hard to move ahead. I am hoping that the NIFTI students will learn design thinking strategies to make sustainability behavior popular (like phenomenally popular) and practically naturally. And this leads to our NIFTI Roundtable 2021 topic of “Sustainability in Education.”

In June 2021, the first YCISL ITW-DTI (Design Thinking Incubator) was launched. The second was just concluded yesterday. The ITW-DTI focuses on design thinking iteration in order for students to get the feel for revisiting design ideas in a fast succession prototyping manner. This gets the “raw-ness” out of the ideas which we thought would be a useful lesson for design thinking newbies. Previous to the ITW-DTI, we had the ITW (Innovators Toolkit Workshop) which was more broadly skills-based and ended with just one presentation. In the ITW-DTI, students have had to give their presentations three times where each time there was a blast of experiential learning.

The ITW-DTI is a much faster program, but also attends to the “5-second Rule” phenomenon that was dragging the ITW program. By this rule and the more highly packed ITW-DTI schedule, the design thinking brainwork stays in the fast lane. Quick acceleration is key, but only needs to be pushed once. Making incremental improvements is a lot simpler too.

Compared to the earlier YCISL workshop programs that were on-campus and totaled many more contact hours, the ITW-DTI is an effective means of experimenting with design thinking with the potential to connect presence with action (EQ-talk). So long as the ITW-DTI experience along with all other YCISL programs spring the Aha! moments for students, I think we have something worth pursuing.

On April 28, 2014, cartoonist Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury, gave the fifth guest lecture in the series “Harry’s Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life.” I watched the video at http://www.stanford.edu/group/religiouslife/cgi-bin/wordpress/programs/rathbun/ but understand that it would only be posted online until May 18, 2014. The lecture was reported by Stanford News here. This entry contains a few notes I made while watching the video.

Overall, I found the lecture to be an informative personal story with many agreeable observations about generational change.

– “…I gave no serious thought as to whether the work was either useful or meaningful in any way…” Commentary: “serious thought” would be something that an older person might have come up with which would have resulted in less productivity, satisfaction and success. This alludes to the fear mindset that adults fall into. His youth focused on the intrinsic motivation (autonomy, mastery and purpose) and fear about it as a career did not enter his mind at the start (it might have stepped into his parents’ minds though).

– “…it was my perspective they were interested in – my generational identity…” Commentary: one of the YCISL take-home messages is to use youth (your generational knowledge) as an advantage.

– “I didn’t know any better.” Commentary: Another take on how adults filter out many options because of a pile of prior negative experiences.

– “In college, there’s very little downside.” Commentary: Balance is key in college. If you can manage the coursework that will get you the diploma at the end, then any free time (and there’s quite a lot compared to high school) can be used to get involved in differentiating pursuits – and develop that EQ.

– “…but the whole dynamic has been speeded up.” Commentary: And there are a lot more traps along the way. Speed may also be reducing intrinsic motivation.

– “We start telling stories almost as soon as we speak.” Commentary: Evidence of creative energy in early childhood. Then adults get in the way.

– “…the opposite of comedy is not seriousness, it’s despair.” Commentary: Finding such useful perspectives is probably a key differentiator between people who succeed or fail in the same pursuit.

Just got around to browsing the May 2012 issue of Popular Photography, and the Editor’s Letter by Miriam Leuchter has caused a spark. It describes the “A Day in the World” project which is similar in concept to the “A Day in the Life of…” series of books that enraptured me back in the mid-1980s starting with the A Day in the Life of America [honestly, I know I bought one of the books in the series but can’t find it presently; no matter].

At this time where digital photography and near instantaneous sharing of such photos is possible, it is truly exciting to see this project concept return. It is happening in a new age of crowdsourcing and eBooks which will be deeply transforming to the original idea.

For the record, this is some of what is found at the organizer’s web site (http://www.aday.org):

Capture daily life

On May 15th we ask you to photograph what is close to you. Upload a photo, share it, compare it and join others all around the world doing the same. Let a part of your life inspire generations to come.

Photographing the world on a single day

Together we will photograph what our lives look like on May 15th 2012. Our goal is to inspire perspectives on humankind – today and tomorrow.

An event for everyone, everywhere

Professionals, amateurs, school children, farmers, social media fans, astronauts, office workers and you. Cell phone camera, Hasselblad, home made or borrowed. We are looking for the perspectives of everyone who enjoys photography!

Picture today, inspire tomorrow

All images will be displayed online for you and everyone to explore. Some of them will be selected for a book, A Day In the World, others in digital exhibitions. Every single one will be saved for future research and inspiration.

Our YCISL Photo Essay assignment is but a tiny version of this project, but I feel that this is a germane opportunity for the SP 2011 students to participate and expand on what they experienced from their YCISL workshop. I will encourage them to enroll and submit photographs – and suggest if they need it to reflect on something significant to them on that day.

I attended a Roundtable discussion at Stanford titled “Education Nation 2.0: Redefining K-12 education in America, before it redefines us” on October 22, 2011. There were 6 panelists (John Hennessy, Cory Booker, Reed Hastings, Salman Khan, Kim Smith and Claude Steele). and 1 moderator (Charlie Rose). It was held in conjunction with Reunion Homecoming which resulted in (what seemed to be) the majority of the audience being alumni. I was interested in the direction that the education reform movement was taking. The discussion was generally a high level discussion of trends in the reform movement (charter schools, technology, improved teacher education) and therefore gravitated towards solutions and visions. Each panelist brought a unique perspective but the most interesting was from Salman Khan whose vision has obviously kept pace with the adoption of his wares; he suggested promoting customized individual learning pace (which really extends to an individual learning plan) and access to topics not traditionally found in the classroom (mentioned proteonomics). Khan’s contribution has immersed him in education and it is now extended globally (presumably where web access is available). He made one spot-on comment about the true universal purpose of education and that was to enable a person to pursue a “productive and happy life.”

Overall, there was an interesting exchange of viewpoints, ideas and anecdotes, but I felt the problem was incompletely defined in scope so the discussion felt quantized. The panelists were mostly looking inward (the “me” issue that I am reading about presently in Understanding Other People: The Five Secrets to Human Behavior by Beverly Flaxington) and did not seem to have an outward view where they could identify reasons other countries were more “successful” than the US. Also, private schools and home schooling were not specifically in the scope of discussion (although the proposed solutions were actually close parallels: private schools<->charter schools and self-paced learning<->home schooling.

How could this information be applied to YCISL? We could talk about the use of technology and even that of Khan Academy as a resource model (especially as an innovation in education – perhaps extensible to sustainability education albeit interactive and responsive). I could also mention that youth need to drive the issue as well be the innovators in education – because, as YCISL teaches, adults are restrained in their creativity. We could have an exercise where students create a new protocol and purpose for schools – dreaming of a school where the pursuit of a productive and happy life is championed (this is the global scale problem).

http://www.stanford.edu/roundtable/

http://www.stanford.edu/roundtable/webcast/

“This is just the beginning.” This is how I started the first meeting in the Stanford classroom for the group of YCISL students from Singapore Polytechnic. It was the beginning of their Stanford experience, of course, but it was also the beginning of the CSDGC YCISL program and they were a part of it. That point of time was also the beginning of their journey towards a greater appreciation of their creativity and potential for leadership through realizing innovation projects. This journey would continue, I insisted, past the workshop end through maintaining contact and actively expanding the network of YCISL alumni for future idea exchange and discussion.

Here are some of the LARGE lessons learned (for me) from this recent workshop program (June 12-25, date of arrival to date of departure):

(1) Conversation is a primary objective.

(2) Buried with creativity may also be personal ambition. Look for it.

(3) Sometimes, you let the moment speak to them.