Content Objectives
Anyone who has never failed at anything probably does not need this curriculum unit, but they have probably never attempted many things in life, and they certainly have not discovered or created anything new. The entire process of learning and growing involves trying and failing and trying again. And again. And again. No one seems to have a problem with the number of times a baby falls before learning to walk. It is expected that they will figure it out eventually and there is much encouragement to keep trying along the way. Each “baby” step is applauded and reinforces the idea that the baby should get back up each time they fall and try, try again.
However, as we get older, somewhere along the way, we begin to believe that we must succeed the first time (or very shortly thereafter) at everything we attempt. If we are met with failure, this translates to “we are a failure”, and we think that perhaps we should try something else, or give up trying altogether. This is a shift in mindset from the baby who can’t be kept down after a fall to the teenager or adult that won’t get back up after a fall, disappointment or setback.
How or why this transition occurs is not nearly as important as the fact that we educators must address this shift if we are to help our students become successful in life. For far too long, the emphasis has been on the destination, and not the process, the end result and not the journey. Our students must come to understand that the learning and the growing and the discovering takes place along the way, and if the focus is only on reaching the destination, far too many give up on the process and never reach their desired destination or discover many ways to get there. We must learn to encourage and celebrate the process!
In high school, I was fortunate enough to have teachers who did this for me, especially in my math classes. I had always struggled with math, especially if I was taught that there was only one way to reach a solution and I needed to figure it out the “correct” way, or I did not understand the way it was taught. If given enough time, though, I could usually reach a solution, but I rarely followed the “pathway” taught in class. I wasn’t trying to be difficult, but I needed to find a way that made sense to me. My process would often involve a lot of trial and error since many times I did not remember or understand how to use the formulas. Often, my teachers would admit that they had no idea how I had reached that conclusion, but since I consistently ended up with the correct answer, they encouraged me to keep doing whatever it was that I was doing because it was working.
One teacher gave me a very valuable key when I was struggling with maintaining my “D” average in geometry. I was frustrated because I did not understand why I had to “waste” time proving that one triangle was congruent to another triangle when I could clearly see that they were congruent. This teacher (who was not my geometry teacher, by the way), explained to me that geometry was not about math—it was about a way of thinking. He explained that it was like the process a defense lawyer uses when trying to prove his or her client’s innocence using the law, step by step. The lawyer had to learn the law and systematically apply it to their case, not simply declare something to be true. Suddenly, I understood what I was trying to do and why I was trying to do it and the process became like a game to me. I challenged myself to see how quickly I could prove a statement to be true or how many steps I could take to prove the same statement. My grade improved to an “A” almost overnight!
Even though I did not realize it at the time, I was learning that there are many ways to approach a problem and many pathways to a solution. I just had to persevere, even when something was very difficult. This lesson was about more than just figuring out how to solve a math problem—it was about learning how to solve life problems. No matter what subject an educator teaches, we must teach students how to think about failure differently. We must share our stories and the stories of others to help them see that failure is part of the process of learning and growing.
Jack Ma, the founder and executive chairman of the Alibaba Group said this very thing. “Our MBA programs teach a lot of success stories making people believe they can easily be successful. But when you share a lot of failure stories, people learn.”6
Teach Students to Think About Failure Differently
Ed Catmull, former president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios once said, “We need to think about failure differently. I’m not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth. But the way most people interpret this assertion is that mistakes are a necessary evil. Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality).” 7
For our students to make the leap from being passive consumers to active creators and innovators, they must begin to embrace the process, which always involves making mistakes. If we are honest, we would have to admit that we don’t really like even the thought of making mistakes. Most people don’t, but if we could reframe our thinking to see that the process of trying and failing helps us to quickly eliminate the ideas that don’t work so that we can get to the ones that will work, we could stop wasting time berating ourselves and channel that energy into exploring other directions.
In Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she describes two different mindsets that determine whether a person can become successful. According to Dweck, a person either has a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. 8 For the person with the fixed mindset, it is all about the outcome, and if the outcome is undesired, the person considers themselves a failure. This person also believes that either they possess the skills necessary to accomplish the task or they do not. A person with a growth mindset realizes that while they may not have the skills initially, those skills can be learned through persistence. They understand that regardless of the outcome, there is value in what is learned in the process, and this motivates them to keep trying.9
Samantha McDuffee puts it this way: “Someone with a fixed mindset believes they are entitled to success without much effort and regards failure as a personal affront. When things go wrong, they are quick to blame, withdraw, lie, and even avoid future challenges or risk. Someone with a growth mindset sees failure as an opportunity rather than an insult. When challenged, they are quick to reassess, adjust, and try again.” 10
“Helping students overcome the limitations of their mindsets is equally if not more important than acquiring content.”11 Educators must begin to reward students who are making multiple efforts toward reaching a goal, not simply the student who arrives first, learns the quickest, or earns the “A.” When we do not do this, we create a culture where students do not learn from failure. In a race, if we only reward the person who crosses the finish line first, the other runners are not motivated to keep running. Between 23 and 25% of the students I teach every day are English Language Learners (ELLs). Many of them are brand new to the country and they are learning alongside their English-speaking classmates. One of the things that I am learning when dealing with my English Language Learners is that they are never simply trying to learn the content—they are learning the language, the technology, the body language, cultural cues, everything! To assess them on their acquisition of the content alone, without recognizing that they are reaching other equally important milestones along the way, does them a disservice. We must celebrate their other accomplishments as well. When we do this, we motivate them to continue to persevere and learn from their mistakes. Sometimes we learn that the only thing they lack is a way to communicate the knowledge they already bring to the table. When we provide multiple ways for them to express what they have learned (and are learning), we learn that they often bring a unique perspective that is invaluable to the process.
Learning from Mistakes and The Process of Innovation
In his article, “Why Failure is the Foundation of Innovation,” Paul Schoemaker quotes James Joyce by stating “mistakes are our portals of discovery.” He goes on to say that “they stimulate us to look beyond our narrow cocoon and encourage lateral thinking. They invite a fuller exploration of the periphery, that vast domain outside our area of focus where treasure may be hidden.”12 This lateral thinking is what Steven Johnson calls the “adjacent possible” in his book, Where Good Ideas Come From.13
Much of what we learn in life is learned through the process of trial and error. When we are learning to ride a bike, roller skate (or rollerblade), or swim, we are motivated by the desire to master the feat, so we keep trying until we accomplish our goal. If we do not, then we never learn. If our fear of falling or drowning is more powerful than our desire to learn, then we sit out life on the sidelines. If we are afraid to take risks, we fail to learn. And if we fail to learn, we will never make new discoveries, and we will never innovate.
According to Edward D. Hess in his article, “Creating an Innovation Culture: Accepting Failure as Necessary,” “Failure is a necessary part of the innovation process because from failure comes learning, iteration, adaptation, and the building of new conceptual and physical models through an iterative learning process. Almost all innovations are the result of prior learning from failures.” He defines innovation as “the result of iterative learning processes as well as environments that encourage experimentation, critical inquiry, critical debate, and accept failures as a necessary part of the process.”14
Hess goes on to say that “Innovation requires a mindset that rejects the fear of failure and replaces that fear of failure with the joy of exploration and experimental learning.”15 This is also known as a growth mindset. So not only is failure a necessary part of learning, but it is also crucial in the process of innovation.
“Trying and failing at something gives you a significantly greater conceptual understanding of how to do something. It is this deep understanding that converts failure into future success.”16
This quote by Kumar Mehta in his article, “How to Turn an Innovation Failure into a Success” resonates with me because this is basically what one of my college professors explained to me when I was concerned about how long it was taking me to work through each week’s assignment. Each set of questions always concluded with the question, “How long did it take you to complete this assignment?” I thought this was a rather odd question, but for me, the answer ranged from two hours to seventeen hours, with the average being about four or five hours. Although I reached the correct answers much of the time, I was deeply troubled because I knew that we would only have a maximum of two hours for an exam. “How could I communicate what I knew in only two hours?” I asked my professor. He explained to me that he knew that I had a much better understanding of the problems because I wrestled with them each week. The week that I spent seventeen hours working on the assignment was because I was stumped by one question that I wrestled and wrestled with all weekend. I was devastated when I finally had to conclude that I could not solve it, but I was the only student to get that question “correct” because I was the only student who did not have an answer. It turns out that the problem was unsolvable. We must teach our students that there is value in the struggle to learn, and that we learn more from material we struggle with than from that which comes easy to us.
Sochiro Honda, the founder of Honda said, “Many people dream of success. Success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. Success represents the one percent of your work that results from the 99 percent that is called failure.”17 Introspection is a necessary part of the process. It is thinking about what did not work, why it did not work, and considering alternate options, and trying again. Repeating this process over and over is required.
Kevin White states in his blog, “Failures as the result from taking innovative risks should not be punished but rewarded. People must take risks to innovate, and people will not innovate if they fear failure.”18 When we translate this to education, the same is true for students (and teachers). Students must take risks to learn, and students will not learn if they fear failure. White goes on to say, “With experimentation and pushing the boundaries you can expect more failures than successes. The faster you can close that feedback loop the faster you can iterate and innovate.” I believe that if we learn to expect more failure, we will be less disappointed by our failures and will be more motivated to keep trying new things.
One of the greatest inspirations for innovation is Thomas Edison and his development of the light bulb. His amazing attitude was evident when he stated, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”19 I believe that there are only two times when failure occurs—when nothing is learned from failure and when nothing is attempted.
Thomas J. Watson, Sr., the founder of IBM, gives closing words of encouragement for this section. “So, go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can, because that's where you will find success: on the far side of failure.”20
Innovations That Occurred by Mistake
It is interesting to note that there are many innovations that occurred purely by accident while the innovator was trying to accomplish something else. If the innovator was successful in their first attempt at innovation, there would be no interesting discoveries made along the way. Although these discoveries may have been unintended, our world would be lacking some incredible inventions. Let’s look at a few of them.
Corn Flakes
Corn flakes were invented by John and Will Kellogg. They were trying to make a pot of boiled grain. They accidentally left the pot on the stove for several days. The grain became hard and moldy. They figured out how to eliminate the mold and the corn flake was born.21
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ruth Wakefield was the owner of the Toll House Inn. One day, she was trying to make chocolate cookies, but realized that she did not have baker’s chocolate (unsweetened). So, she broke up a block of Nestle semi-sweet chocolate into small pieces, assuming that it would melt into the batter to create chocolate cookies. It did not, and the chocolate chip cookie was born.22
Ice Cream Cone
At the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, an ice cream vendor ran out of dishes in which to serve his ice cream. The vendor next to him, Ernest A. Hamwi, came up with the idea to shape his waffles into cones to hold the ice cream and thus began the waffle cone.23
Potato Chips
George Crum (also known as George Speck) was a chef at the Moon Lake Lodge Resort in Saratoga Lake, New York in 1853. One of his customers kept complaining that his fried potatoes were too thick and mushy, and he kept sending them back. Crum became angry, sliced his potatoes paper thin as a joke, and then fried them. Surprisingly, his customer loved them, and this was the beginning of the potato chip, at least according to this version of the story! (There seem to be several versions of this story that all originate at the Moon Lake Lodge Resort.)24,25
Slinky
Richard Jones, a naval engineer, was trying to make a meter to monitor power on naval ships. When he dropped a tension spring on the ground, he noticed that it kept bouncing from place to place. This is how he got the idea for the slinky.26
Post-it Notes
Spencer Silver worked as a researcher for 3M Laboratories. He was trying to make a strong adhesive. He created a weak adhesive that stuck to objects but could be pulled off without leaving a mark. Years later, another 3M researcher came to him with the idea to use the adhesive to create a bookmark that would stick to paper and save the page without damaging it. This eventually became the Post-it note.27
Play-Doh
Play-Doh was originally created by a company called Kutol Products to clean soot off wallpaper during the time when people heated their homes with coal. When people began to heat their homes with natural gas and electricity, there was no longer a need for this product. Joseph McVicker was trying to turn the company around when his sister-in-law, Kay Zufall, shared an article that she had read that claimed the product could be used for modeling projects. Since she was a preschool teacher, she took the product to school and allowed her students to play with it. She re-named the product “Play-Doh.” The company was saved when it began to market its product as a children’s toy, rather than a cleaning product.28
Silly Putty
James Wright was an engineer at General Electric during World War II. He was trying to make a rubber substitute out of silicon. While he was testing silicon oil, he added boric acid and discovered that it bounced. Although it did not work as a substitute for rubber, it made for a cool toy.29
Tea Bags
Two women requested the first patent for a “Tea Leaf Holder” made from mesh in 1901, but tea merchant, Thomas Sullivan began shipping his tea to his customers in silk pouches. His customers began using the silk pouches as tea bags even though this was not the intended use.30
X-ray Machine
Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen was a physicist in Germany. He was experimenting with vacuum tubes covered with cardboard when he noticed a glow coming from a nearby chemically coated screen. He called the rays “X-rays” because the origin was unknown. While he was playing around with the screen, he discovered that if he placed his hand in front of the screen, he could see past his skin to his bones.31
Implantable Pacemaker
1. An electrical engineer named John Hopps (Canada) was conducting research with hypothermia and was trying to use radio frequency heating to increase body temperature. During his experiment, he discovered that if a heart stopped beating because it cooled down, it could be restarted by artificial stimulation. This led to the development of the cardiac pacemaker, but this device was too large to be implanted.32
2. Wilson Greatbatch, an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of Buffalo was working on building equipment to record heart sounds. When he accidentally used the wrong transistor, he discovered that rather than recording sounds, the device began emitting an electrical pulse that mimicked the beat of the heart. He shared his invention with a surgeon named William Chardack at Buffalo’s Veteran’s Administration hospital and together they were able to control a dog’s heartbeat and then a human’s heartbeat. Greatbatch has been quoted as saying, “Failure is a learning experience, and the guy who has never failed has never done anything.”33
This innovation is an example of two different people in two different countries working to resolve the same problem and creating the same innovation.
Microwave
Percy LeBaron Spencer was an engineer with the Raytheon Corporation. He was working on magnetrons—high-powered vacuum tubes that generate short radio waves called microwaves—when he accidentally discovered microwave cooking. When a chocolate bar in his pocket melted while he was working, he realized that this occurred because of the magnetrons. He placed popcorn inside the machine, and it popped. He later patented the microwave.34
Penicillin
Sir Alexander Fleming, a scientist threw away a contaminated petri dish he was working with. He later discovered that the mold on this dish was dissolving all the bacteria around it. He decided to grow the mold and discovered that it contained a powerful antibiotic, penicillin.35
These innovations are evidence of what can happen when multiple attempts to accomplish a specific task produced an unintended effect or led to an interesting discovery. How many innovations do not exist because the innovator stopped short of discovering something new or gave up because of frustration?
Design Thinking Process
The Design Thinking Process is central to this curriculum unit. Students will not simply memorize the five steps to regurgitate on an exam but will learn them by using them over and over in each activity in this unit. This is a human-centered designed process, so the person(s) the technology is designed for is always at the center of the process. The process is not linear, and each step will be re-visited as often as necessary to accomplish the task (or discover something new along the way!)
Empathize
In this first step, there is an attempt to gain an empathic understanding of the problem from the perspective of the person who will be affected by the solution. Empathy is important because the person addressing the problem removes their personal assumptions from the process. This may involve immersing oneself into the situation to get a different perspective and observing from the inside. The process involves asking questions of all relevant parties in order to get a better understanding of what the real issue is so that the solution can be appropriate.
Define
A problem statement is generated during this step that focuses on what the person needs. It synthesizes all the information gathered in the first step. This statement may look like the following. “How might we help _________to _____________?”
Ideate
This step involves brainstorming and generating ideas, thinking outside the box, and exploring all possibilities to find solutions to the problem statement that has been generated. These ideas should be non-judgmental, creative, and human-centered.
Prototype
This is the point where ideas are sketched out, diagrammed, visually represented, often in crude ways, but the point is to communicate the ideas. The prototype should be inexpensive, scaled down, and practical, but should represent the best possible solution to the problem.
Test
In this stage, the prototype is tried out, refined, and reiterated. Feedback is requested and used to make changes or improvements. More ideations may occur, more prototyping may be necessary, and the process may continue in an effort to reach the best solution.
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