This document describes innovative didactics used at Oerestad Gymnasium based on the Index Compass model. The Index Compass is used to guide students through innovation projects addressing real-world issues in four phases: prepare, perceive, prototype, and produce. Examples provided include projects on financial crises and future cities. The goal is for students to develop skills in creativity, innovation, and addressing global challenges. The model emphasizes using theory and knowledge to inform prototypes and solutions. Challenges include the extensive preparation time needed and that this approach requires students to take ownership of their learning without direct answers from teachers.

1. Innovative didactics at Oerestad Gymnasium based
on the Index Compass

2. Overview
- What is innovative learning? Why innovative learning?
- Presentation of The Index Compass
- Examples of realized educational programs:
- The Financial Crisis (social science)
- The Future City (nature geography and Danish)

3. Innovative learning
- Projects
- Developing creative and innovative skills
- The Students as project Managers
- Less strictly structured but still organized

4. Global challenges

5. Examples of the questions dealt with in innovative projects
- Health
- Sustainability
- Growing Cities
- Food Supplies

6. Why do we do that?
- Becoming global participants in the society - becoming change-makers
- Facing global challenges that exist in the era of globalisation and will persist
in the future
- Creating value for other people
- Creativity and innovation are essential skills in our future society

7. From global to local
- Global innovation means solutions for the entire planet - it is a lot to process
- Local innovation is far easier to develop

8. Radical / incremental
Radical innovation
Developing new solution never seen before meeting completely new user´s need
Incremental innovation
Far easier - using existing innovation and just refining it a bit more

10. Or projects inside the school-organization
- How to make the food in the canteen sustainable?
- How to instegate a serious and sober debate among the students on the
social media?

11. Index Design to Improve Life Education: The Compass
- To guide the students through the process of innovation
- The Compass offers a scafollded method
Four phases:
- PREPARE
- PERCEIVE
- PROTOTYPE
- PRODUCE

13. Professionalism - not kindergarden
- Innovation has to be based on theory and knowledge
- The students need a lot of knowledge in order to be able to
create solutions
- It’s a good idea to organize theory-courses ahead of the project
period
- Innovation activities require detailed long-term planning

14. Generation Debt
- Social science
- Problem: A lot of young people are
borrowing money in the bank
to afford a high level of consumption
Challenge: How to prevent and
minimize debt among young people?

15. Why do we have a young generation with a huge
private financial debt?
Theory:
-Financial crisis
-Household debts
-The economical circuit
-Economical goals
-GNP
-Financial politics
-Deregulation

16. Perceive-phase
Before the innovative project: 6 lessons studying theory (research, analyze,
acquiring knowledge)

17. The target user - focus on the target group
Important to relate challenges to target group needs in order to narrow the scope
of the problem and make sure that the design solution meet the need of the users.

18. Personas - target groups

19. Antropological methods: observation/ interviews

20. Knowledge-mapping / project plan
What are we
gonna find out?
Articles to
read?
Where to
researche?
Whom are we
asking?
Inside the team:
Who is
responable for
which tasks?
Time-schedule Notes /
Important

22. Prototype phase

23. Prototype phase - kick-off-brainstorming

24. Prototyping: Apps, campaigns, websites, events,
pamflets, games etc.

26. Produce: Branding the product

28. Across curricular project: The future city

29. The future city
Choose and examine a case which contains a problem related to future urban
planning
Subjects
-Danish (branding, convincing, communication)
-Nature geography (sustainabilities, food suplies, urban heat, rubbish disposal, air
pollution, urban planning)

30. Open space - prepare phase
picture

31. Extended brainstorm

32. Perceive-phase
- Reading
- Analyzing
- Interviewing
- Observating

33. Sum-up (feedback/ feedforward)
Important that the groups meet after each phase,
present the results of their work and give feedback
or feedforward to another group as well as the
teacher is giving the students feedback.
It is crucial that it isn’t an exam or at test,
but that the feedforward is directed to what
can be improved in the next phase.

34. A student exam-project
PERCEIVE-PHASE
The topics
The greenhouse-effect (nature geography)
- The advantages of bikecycle-riding (nature geography)
- The disadvantages of going by car (nature geography)
- Analyzing an existing Danish bike-campaign “Biking to Work” (Danish)

35. The innovative part of the project
- How can we take advantage from earlier bike-campaigns in order to create a
campaign that will improve bicycling radically in the city of Copenhagen?

39. SUM UP - advantages
- It is a way to motivate less engaged or perhaps less academic students
- It is a funny and varied way of learning
- The students have ownership to their projects
- The students learn to collaborate and built on others ideas
- The students are studying a topic in depth

40. SUM UP - challenges
- It takes a long time to prepare a detailed innovative programme
- The teacher will have to be very acurate and precise in her instructions
- Two educational facilitators provide a better programme and result
- The teacher doesn’t know the answers
- It’s a demanding way of learning because there are no routines / no fill in the
blanks