Inaugural KCS By Design workshop.

Have you heard of design thinking? If not, you might want to read further. It’s a process full of possibility, that’s literally changing countries. In a school that aspires to making the world better, it belongs.

Design thinking is a process that takes a group of people from ‘complex problem’ to ‘solution’ in ways that are exceptionally correlated with success. Design thinking deeply engages all stakeholders, requires them to empathise with all affected, and reins in the more typical ‘rush to conclusion’ so creative win-win thinking has time to emerge. San Francisco-based IDEO is renowned as a source of world-changing design thinking. Schools and organisations around the globe that have lofty aspirations are following their lead.

KCS is too.

KCS recently launched our new KCS By Design program. It leverages design thinking and Web 2.0 technology to connect interested senior students and staff in making KCS outstanding. It is open to all students in grades 7 and 8 and all staff who wish to join. Involvement can be as simple as joining our dedicated Wiki, where members can post what they see as challenges, problems or opportunities for KCS. Involvement can also be as significant as students and staff working together to make solutions happen.

As part of KCS By Design, members were invited to attend our inaugural workshop on design thinking, facilitated by Future Design School on November 3rd. The students and faculty in attendance chose to pursue a challenge posed by a student: How can we better enable KCS to differentiate learning? We’ve started an exciting journey to figure that out. Many other ideas for how to improve KCS were also identified, and these are now posted on our Wiki for others to run with.

While two FDS facilitators worked with our intrepid group, we learned that other FDS facilitators were in Paris leading a group of CEOs through the exact same design-thinking process. Good to hear.

We’ve always known our students were destined to make the world better. It’s nice to know that CEOs are learning to do the same.

Andrea Fanjoy,
Assistant Head, Academics
You can follow Andrea on Twitter @afanjoy.