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=Inspiration:= ** “Our first responsibility is to create the innovators, not the innovations” ** =**Goals of this wiki space:**= This wiki provides a common space to share materials and activities experienced in workshops on design thinking associated with the Henry Ford Learning Institute (HFLI).
 * **Why we need design thinking...**
 * “New economic realities are making the case for innovation” **
 * Mike Schmidt**
 * Director, Education and Community Development**
 * Ford Motor Company Fund**
 * Board Member, Henry Ford Learning Institute** ||  || **Our job as educators...**
 * George Kembel**
 * Director, Hasso Platner Institite of Design at Stanford** ||

This wiki is intended to:
 * Introduce Design Thinking principles to support the development of a shared understanding around design thinking methodology and mindsets.
 * Introduce the language of Design Thinking to promote collaboration between educators around common ideas.
 * Allow educators using Design Thinking to share ideas and materials for use in schools with colleagues or with students.

**Background- Description and Definitions:**
Design Thinking is about developing a student’s creative competence in their ability to be innovative. Being a creative person alone is not sufficient for being innovative; students need to be confident in their ability to identify the value of their creative solutions to affect change in their world. Design thinking curriculum activities and experiences are intended to develop a student’s **trust** in their own personal creativity and the **skills** and **mindsets** needed to apply creativity to solve problems in engaging situations. Curriculum experiences are designed to continuously expose students to a variety of creative challenges. Lesson goals support students’ in reflecting on and questioning their beliefs about creativity and innovation to help students develop both the confidence and competence within their application of their creative behavior. Students participate in educational experiences that require them to use higher order thinking such as divergent thinking to generate new ideas or synthesis skills to analyze data to identify the needs of actual users. These experiences require the students to effectively communicate their solutions to an out-of-school audience, effectively generating motivation and engagement to participate with design thinking practices as the students receive feedback on how their personal and innovative ideas served the unmet needs of members of their own community. Design thinking is not just a process for developing innovative solutions; design thinking is a mindset and the skills to support this mindset for confidence with collaboration, creativity and communication of ideas.