January 2018 – Pic: imparting early innovation processes to rural school teachers in the South of Chile.

This program was created with the objective of transferring early innovation tools to a rural school context. In Chile, rural schools and technical schools are usually challenged by the lack of quality in the content delivered (not very innovative) and also by the lack of opportunities their teachers and students have to develop their creativity. Some of the poverty in Chile has to do with the immigration of people from the countryside to the city searching for “something else”. It is in this context that FIA (Foundation for Innovation in the agricultural sector, from the Ministry of Agriculture) decided to launch a formation strategy to empower people in the rural areas and to prepare kids to impact their own contexts. This program for giving formation opportunities was there before the DILAB, but once they met us, they thought we could figure out a way to instruct similar things that we do in Engineering and that it could be transferred to the classroom. I developed a simple curriculum based on the design process with a human-centered point of view for kids from 7th to 12th grade. I based the content in: 1) what I had learn in my education classes 2) what I had developed in the past for executive teaching and for engineers. It is very similar to the crash course I teach in the AnthroDesign course, yet is simplified so that a teacher in a rural area can instruct it to others. Today, my team and I prepare the teachers in how to instruct early innovation. We do it through the use of a manual (like a lesson plan or guide), worksheets and a visual presentation. We usually have to travel North or South of Santiago (sometimes 10 hours by car into a remote area, sometimes just by plane). Then, all the children, from every region, compete in a national contest created by FIA and us. Winners go to a “technological tour” to open up their horizons. You can see a very compelling video  . The main objective of this project is to EMPOWER.