February 23, 2011

No right brain left behind

Larissa Hayden

The expectations of skills needed to succeed have changed dramatically in the past few years, with a greater focus on creativity and innovation, yet the educational system has remained as rigid as ever. With the focus still on standardized testing, students are missing the opportunity to exercise right brain thinking and potentially losing out in the long run as a result.

No Right Brain Left Behind is a speed innovation challenge, calling on the creative industries to concept ideas that can help the creativity crisis happening in US schools today. The nonprofit challenge was issued to creative industries by a collective of thinkers, dreamers, doers, creators, educators, and provocateurs in the creative space. In collaboration with Social Media Week, to combat this problem. During the week-long initiative, participants created and submitted their actionable ideas. Starting on Feb 14, judges narrowed down ideas into a shortlist of winners over the course of a week. During this week, users could also vote for an idea to be automatically shortlisted for piloting in schools. During the final round, the most-liked idea wins the People's Choice (honorable mention) award.

The Tribal DDB team (Larissa Hayden, Caleb Kramer, Eric Schlackman, and Michael Evashevski) approach involved looking at the disconnect between the class objectives (doing well on standardized tests) and the individual educational needs of the students. To fix this disconnect, the team decided to work within the system and update a rapidly antiquating element: the textbook. By working with publishers to create dynamic lessons tailored to students, Tribal DDB saw an opportunity to extend publishers' business offerings while greatly benefitting students, calling this innovative program: LIVINGBOOKS.

LIVINGBOOKS inspires students through evolving, personalized lessons – like Pandora Radio for textbooks. LIVINGBOOKS customizes existing publishers' content through a dynamic template that self-edits to reflect its readers' interests. It generates study guides and tests that help students internalize information in a way that encourages creativity by relying on their input.

Check out Tribal DDB's LIVINGBOOKS here.

Click here for a full list of entries.

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