What's Your I(nnovator) Q(uotient)?

Thanks to Brett Jacobsen, head of school at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School, for inviting me to join him in a conversation about bringing innovation to school. Our chat is featured as a podcast on his new site, Design Movement: 21st Century Learning and Leadership.
We'll be continuing this conversation in person next week at the National Association of Independent Schools Conference in Philadelphia. Joining us for a session on Thursday, February 28, will be Jonathan Martin, former head of St. Gregory School in Tucson. I visited St. Greg's and its Design/Build studio as part of my research for the book. It's a great example of how to make room for thinking and creative problem solving within the school setting.
Please join us if you're headed to NAIS, and let's grow the conversation about creating a new generation of innovators. Here's the podcast:

Links from Learning & the Brain

Thanks to all who attended my presentation on Bringing Innovation to School at the Learning and the Brain Conference in San Francisco. Not only was I honored to take part, but came away with fresh insights from researchers investigating what makes us humans so creative. Hard to beat sunny SF as a place to ponder big ideas--whether it was jazz as a metaphor for collaboration, simple but powerful ways to activate positive emotions, or the importance of rest and relaxation to fire up the imagination.
Here are links to the various sites and resources I mentioned:
Gallup HOPE Index for 2012
The Henry Ford Museum 
Maker Faire
Mt. Elliott Makerspace
HeroRat (a project of Apopo)
KaBOOM!
Fixes column in the NY Times
NY Times Learning Network, where I've been writing a series related to Fixes
Henry Ford Learning Institute, which offers a summer design thinking institute for teachers
Studio H 
MakerSpaces for Education 
Design for Extreme Affordability, cross-disciplinary, design thinking, PBL course at Stanford
Fail Faire
What are your action steps for bringing innovation to school? Would love to continue this conversation!