Innovating Play

Tech integration for early childhood education as thoughtful as it is wholehearted Technology isn't just a way to innovate instruction; it's also the key to building classrooms that are dynamic, playful, and truly connected. In Innovating Play, early childhood educators Jessica LaBar-Twomey and Christine Pinto share the insights that led their kindergarten classes to generative, daily collaborations from opposite ends of the United States. In the process, they offer elementary educators a powerful set of digital tools that transform social-emotional learning. LaBar-Twomey and Pinto guide readers through the process of leveraging classroom technology in order to foster empathy and broaden horizons. With a warm, inviting style, and drawing from the rich examples of their own classrooms, Jessica and Christine offer a treasure trove of actionable, impactful tips that will help you seamlessly connect your students with the world around them. "Christine and Jessica have created an incredibly insightful, realistic, robust guide to innovating early childhood education based on their own classroom instruction. Their masterfully crafted pedagogy weaves together authentic learning, design thinking, and tech integration all through the play and discovery learning so crucial for our youngest learners. Innovating Play is guaranteed to inspire, guide, and support meaningful technology integration for authentic learning experiences." -Lisa Highfill, technology integration specialist, co-author and creator ofThe HyperDoc Handbook and Teachers Give Teachers "This book will provide coaches the resources and detailed examples to support teachers in implementation. The examples drive digital literacy for all and never deviate from core curriculum practices. Jessica and Christine have showcased a multitude of ways in which equity and inclusion have been intentionally embedded through their cycle of learning." -Nyree Clark, curriculum program specialist, technology, TK-6 "Innovating Play is a fun, easy-to-read how-to resource for early childhood educators that blends core curriculum and purposeful tech beautifully. Christine and Jessica not only model their design to teach twenty-first-century skills to our littles, they will inspire you to reimagine and innovate play in your own class!" -Erika Sanchez, MEd, kindergarten teacher

Examines the role of playfulness in animal and human development, highlighting its links to creativity and, in turn, to innovation.

Innovation Through Understandingsm The toughest part of innovation? Accurately predicting what customers want, need, and will pay for. Even if you ask them, they often can’t explain what they want. Now, there’s a breakthrough solution: Innovation Games. Drawing on his software product strategy and product management consulting experience, Luke Hohmann has created twelve games that help you uncover your customers’ true, hidden needs and desires. You’ll learn what each game will accomplish, why it works, and how to play it with customers. Then, Hohmann shows how to integrate the results into your product development processes, helping you focus your efforts, reduce your costs, accelerate time to market, and deliver the right solutions, right from the start. Learn how your customers define success Discover what customers don’t like about your offerings Uncover unspoken needs and breakthrough opportunities Understand where your offerings fit into your customers’ operations Clarify exactly how and when customers will use your product or service Deliver the right new features, and make better strategy decisions Increase empathy for the customers’ experience within your organization Improve the effectiveness of the sales and service organizations Identify your most effective marketing messages and sellable features Innovation Games will be indispensable for anyone who wants to drive more successful, customer-focused product development: product and R&D managers, CTOs and development leaders, marketers, and senior business executives alike.

Celebrating the spectacular history of Mattel, this volume brings together archival images from the company's early years and expresses the joy and energy of all the toys since its founding, a fantastic tribute to the happiness of childhood and the enduring memories of life's best moments. Readers of all ages will delight in rediscovering their favorite toys and learning the stories behind them.

This book is about mathematics in the management of innovation, showing how recent advances in mathematics help us grasp and support innovation as a social activity of thinking and imagining together. It will make the reader rethink both innovation and mathematics by having them interplay in practical organizational settings. Told as fiction to make its argument more accessible, the book is nonetheless grounded in theoretical reflections and recent mathematical advances. In recounting the adventures of a committed and enthusiastic inventor-designer hampered by the increasing industrial bureaucratization of his world, it accounts for the fate of many innovation processes in large companies and administrations. Successful innovation hinges on having everyone involved in the process share a space of conceptual exploration. This philosophical aspect of the innovation process is about collective imagination, a notion that customary styles of thought have great difficulty dealing with. This is where mathematics, of a new kind, might prove to be a new platform for better management of innovation.

This book examines how to create world-class, technology-oriented innovation in higher education in China. It also proposes a model in response to the demand for promoting scientific and technological advances and technological innovation in the Chinese higher education system. Moreover, the book explores key concepts, pathways, models, policies, practices, trends and implications, and offers insights into fostering innovation in higher education. Lastly, it discusses how public policy theories can be applied to promote university technology transfer in order to create world-class universities in today’s China.

The Literacy of Play and Innovation provides a portrait of what innovative education looks like from a literacy perspective. Through an in-depth case study of a "maker" school's innovative design--in particular, of four early childhood educator's classrooms--this book demonstrates that children's inspiration, curiosity, and creativity is a direct result of the school environment. Presenting a unique, data-driven model of literacy, play, and innovation taking the maker movement beyond STEM education, this book helps readers understand literacy learning through making and the creative approaches embedded in early literacy classroom practices.

Successful innovation demands more than a good strategic plan; it requires creative improvisation. Much of the "serious play" that leads to breakthrough innovations is increasingly linked to experiments with models, prototypes, and simulations. As digital technology makes prototyping more cost-effective, serious play will soon lie at the heart of all innovation strategies, influencing how businesses define themselves and their markets. Author Michael Schrage is one of today's most widely recognized experts on the relationship between technology and work. In Serious Play, Schrage argues that the real value in building models comes less from the help they offer with troubleshooting and problem solving than from the insights they reveal about the organization itself. Technological models can actually change us--improving the way we communicate, collaborate, learn, and innovate. With real-world examples and engaging anecdotes, Schrage shows how companies such as Disney, Microsoft, Boeing, IDEO, and DaimlerChrysler use serious play with modeling technologies to facilitate the collaborative interactions that lead to innovation. A user's guide included with the book helps readers apply many of the innovation practices profiled throughout. A landmark book by one of the most perceptive voices in the field of innovation.