Worcester Incubator for Innovation

Yesterday was the first workshop for the Art of Science Learning Worcester Incubator for Innovation, a year long project.

From the welcome letter from the director: Welcome Art of Science Learning Fellows, You have been selected from a field of remarkably talented, interesting, and diverse background to pilot an innovation curriculum that links the arts with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning. Coupled with the cutting-edge program, your collective creativity, aptitudes, abilities, and new-found knowledge will focus on the challenge of developing inventive transportation solutions in Worcester.

There are a hundred fellows and after the introduction, we were divided into groups for our first challenge. We were given a box of "stuff": Styrofoam shapes, clay, sticky notes, markers, crayons, dowels, pipe cleaners, tape, magazines. We had to use the materials to model what innovation meant to us, as a team. This technique was called metaphorming. I'm not sure my group accomplished this, but working with the materials was a great ice-breaker for a cooperative task.