The Art in "Failing"

Enjoy my evening tea with my Raspberry Pi.

Making mistakes or experiencing the dreadful word, feeling or act of failing is often, if not ever, looked upon as a positive. Educational institutions commonly don’t celebrate it nor is it discussed enough to see how mistakes or moments of “failing” are opportunities for growth, creative problem solving and innovation. Many times we stick to the rules, focus on test scores and grades to define success. After all this is what works and this is what’s easiest to follow and measure. There is a certain level of truth in this and I feel that this is also necessary. However, what’s always easy and familiar isn’t always the best measure of what can come out of a teachable moment or learning experience.

Innovation is often defined as a process that produces something new and unique. (Tahirsylaj, 265) Additionally, a growing literature put the emphasis on the importance of failure towards success. The emphasis isn’t placed on failure itself, but on failure as a prerequisite for success. (Tahirsylaj, 265) According the Ruth Gunther McGrath, as published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), there are seven principles that refer to “putting intelligent failure to work”:

1. Decide what success and failure would look like before you launch an initiative,
2. Convert assumptions into knowledge,
3. Be quick about it - fail fast,
4. Contain the downside risk - fail cheaply,
5. Limit uncertainty,
6. Build a culture that celebrates intelligent failure, and
7. Codify and share what you learn. (Tahirsylaj, 268)​

With this in mind, I’ve taken the task of learning how the Raspberry Pi could be used as a tool to promote creativity and learning in the classroom. It’s not a new concept but it is to me. For years I’ve always thought of exploring its potential, however I never got into it. I have very little experience with programming, I learned a bit in high school, almost 20 years ago. However, I know I’m a fast learner and willing to take the risk and learn from trial and error. My motivator was recently sparked by further learning about maker education, as indicated in my last blog post. My aim is to get started, but to develop an understanding how the Raspberry Pi (Rpi) could be integrated across the curriculum. I’ve already set up my Rpi and started to learn some Python programming. I’ve already managed to fry an SD card...I have no idea how but I’m quite impressed that I was capable of doing that. However, I got a new one to start over without repeating the incident again successfully.
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My next endeavour is to attach a mini touchscreen to increase the maneuverability of my Rpi. I’m finding the use of an additional monitor a bit bulky, so I did some research and discovered that this is actually possible. Let’s see how this works out - updates soon to come. Either way keeping these seven principles in mind has been an exhilarating experience. In a recent article I came across also touched upon the concept of creativity, failure and success. “Successful people - creative people - fail every day, just like everybody else. Except they don’t view failure as a verdict. They view it as an opportunity. Indeed, it’s failure that paves the way for creativity.” (Leopold, 2012)

References:
Leopold, T. (2012, January 28). The success of failure: Pulitzer winner's surprising road to the top. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/20/living/jennifer-egan-creativity-failure/index.html?hpt=hp_c1 
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Tahirsylaj, A. S. (2012). Stimulating creativity and innovation through Intelligent Fast Failure. Thinking Skills and Creativity,7(3), 265-270. doi:10.1016/j.tsc.2012.05.005 ​