Jayme Cellitioci:
I think it goes back to looking at what is needed and when and what is the value and what is the impact. And so just because things are at our fingertips doesn’t mean that they should be the first choice of use if they are not a match for the journey we’re taking or where we want to end up. And so I think particularly with invention education, I’m trying to make sure that kids look in their recycle bin and that they know that that is gold for them to be working with.

Matthew Worwood::
Hello everyone, My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood::
This is the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the field of education.

Matthew Worwood::
Will be talking with scholars, educators and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood::
So let’s begin. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And if you are just listening to this episode for the first time, I want to point out that it is part of a two part interview which we refer referred to as a double espresso. So this is the second part of that two part interview with Yap Hartson and Jamie Cellotosi. And Jamie is the Senior Director of education for the National Inventors hall of Fame. So in the first part, we was talking about that program and how we might do more to support innovation in K through 12 education, particularly when it comes to mentoring and raising innovators in our classroom environment. But in this episode, we’re going to talk a little bit more about technology and technology in terms of its impact, impact in society. And I think also given the fact that we are very fortunate to have Yap Hartson on the show who led the development of Bluetooth wireless technology, we see an opportunity here to talk a little bit about things like ethics and the consequences of technologies that really do go on to be very disruptive in society, both in good ways and potentially at times they can have some unintended consequences as well.

Matthew Worwood::
So let’s begin.

Jaap Haartsen:
Foreign.

Matthew Worwood::
So, yep, I’m gonna just kind of dive straight in and I quite often pull from Roger’s innovation diffusion theory, which talks a little bit about innovations. And quite often when we’re designing something, there’s obviously an intended outcome, we’re working to solve a problem. But likewise, if that technology, such as Bluetooth, or we look at things like generative AI, but social media, the Internet, the World Wide Web, these kind of really big disruptive technolog sometimes can go on and have unintended consequences as well. And the reason why I bring that up is given your background developing these technologies, I’m curious, a, to what extent does these unintended consequences kind of emerge? And within Roger’s innovation diffusion theory, there’s kind of potential known unintended consequences of this technology. And of course there’s, there’s unintended consequences that we, we don’t imagine. But I’m particularly interested to kind of explore this topic because then I’d like to kind of get us to think about what we might do as we’re raising innovators to be more sensitive to some of the societal impacts that technology can have in society. So first part of the question, to what extent do you think about unintended consequences when you’re going about developing what might be a really disruptive technology?

Jaap Haartsen:
Yeah, that’s, that’s a good question, Matt, actually, because I’m of the opinion that any new thing you can think of can be used in the wrong way. And also, no Bluetooth. Bluetooth is a radio communication device, but it can be used as a remote control. And then, yeah, it can set up explosives and do wrong things. But on the other end, it also helps a lot of people in communicating with each other. And so every metal has two sides. And I don’t think that by going in a way that we say, okay, we don’t create this technology because it could have a wrong effects, that that will be the solution for that. It’s more like, how can we educate the people that they do not misuse the technology.

Jaap Haartsen:
And actually that has nothing to do with technology itself. It has more to do with the ethics of the people themselves. Because, yeah, as I always said, the very simple example, a knife you can use to cut your meat for your food or your vegetable, maybe that’s a better example nowadays, but you can also kill another person with it. And yeah, therefore we should not have a knife. And that’s the same with technology. And every technology you can use in a bad way, and as I said, we should raise your humanity, that you should not be motivated to use it in that way, in the wrong way.

Cyndi Burnett:
Jaab, thank you for that response. I think it really provides a holistic view of invention itself. So, Jamie, I’m curious, from your perspective in the work that you do, is this something that you talk about with students in Terms of ethics, of what we invent in the consequences of those things. And how do you do that?

Jayme Cellitioci:
At the core, I would say that we are always trying to get students to think in ways of. In what ways might we, and how might we. And all of these wonderful sort of statement and question starters that are beloved to the creativity world. And you know, I think that exploring areas like this come from asking good questions and having that open endedness. When I think about technology, I always remind myself that a paper bag is technology. And so I think it’s great to sort of widen the conversation about technology, for example, and then be able to look at our children having experiences with as much hands on tech like LEDs and motors and all of those materials we like to give to prototype with, as well as when they maybe go home and are using their laptop, for example. So I think first and foremost starting with what is technology and how are children engaging and interacting with it? And then going into these more specific realms that you’re speaking to with talking about some of the consequences. And one of my roles is to make sure that children and teachers, or at least a role I assign to myself, is to make sure that they have the opportunity to know a little bit more about what is inside of their cell phone and how do these things work that they are using.

Jayme Cellitioci:
And we got a little bit this past summer as we were piloting one of our new modules called InControl, the kids are going on this amazing road trip and making all kinds of discoveries. So we introduced AI in one of our modules called InControl this summer. And we did it in such a way where children are designing these dashboards to be able to go on an ultimate road trip. And they build a little prototype of an AI assistant and they just start to have some good conversation about some of the beneficial ways that AI can be integrated. Now they’re not using a computer while they do this, but they’re just exploring the topic. They do, however, get to see a video. And one of our inductees had talked to us a little bit about this Greek robot named Talos and AI coming on the scene a very long time ago. And what I saw was teachers were able to find a little bit of comfort of knowing that even though some of these AI tools are rising quickly on the scene, that there are routes that go way, way back.

Jayme Cellitioci:
And so we can kind of see how we’ve been incrementally getting here. And so, you know, I think a lot of people were very comfortable with getting packages quickly during the Pandemic, but maybe didn’t know how much AI was playing a role in what was happening, for example. So I think one of the tasks that I charge our team with is to be able to share so many of the ways that AI has been part of technology and part of our society, because I think that that’s an important discussion to have. Long before sort of the ubiquitous use of ChatGPT, which as a little aside, when I started myself using some of these tools, what I realized was it’s an even more exciting chance in the classroom in a very hands on way to be talking about making forced connections and some of the creativity based tools that are behind the AI that we are using. So I think as much as we can get hands on visceral experiences that ground all of this, that’s my real mission with NIF education programs.

Matthew Worwood::
And I just wanted to follow up on this idea of kind of force connections, which is I like this idea of doing a divergent thinking activity to some extent around a particular technology that the students are familiar with, that they might perceive it in one particular way, but then by having these false connections you can challenge them potentially to diverge their thinking specifically focus on an area that perhaps they hadn’t considered before. And I this really kind of hit home for me when I was watching Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth 2006 about climate change. And I think we had a PlayStation 2 and I suddenly realized that the standby switch, for example, was drawing power. And it made me realize that obviously the design of the PlayStation 2 it was to be more responsive. It was looking from the consumer’s perspective, how does it power on really quickly? We want to make it easy and accessible for the use. But I’m going to make the assumption that the engineers in that time hadn’t necessarily considered the fact that it was going to continue to draw power and whether or not that was ethically responsible to do that or it wasn’t a big enough priority for them. So I really like that and I don’t know if any of you have any follow ups because it’s not just climate change. There’s other things, other perspective that we might take when it comes to talking about new technology breakthroughs.

Jayme Cellitioci:
Yep, I’ll share a couple of thoughts and then I’d love to hear your perspective on what an engineer is thinking about while they’re designing and developing an innovation, because I think that will shine an interesting light on things. I think it goes back to looking at what is needed and when and what is the value and what is the impact. And so just because things are at our fingertips doesn’t mean that they should be the first choice of use if they are not a match for the journey we’re taking or where we want to end up. And so I think, particularly with invention education, I’m trying to make sure that kids look in their recycle bin and that they know that that is gold for them to be working with in terms of taking an idea from maybe that idea to a 2D sketch to a 3D model, really looking at the wide array of materials that are available to you and not necessarily maybe going straight to typing. And so I think that the more breadth and depth that we have with understanding what tools are and what materials we can leverage to be able to create and invent and make and make that impact, I think then we will start to be able to feel like we have some choices along the way.

Jaap Haartsen:
Yeah, I can add on this, Jamie, because I was talking in the previous episode about no boundary conditions when you start inventing and creating, but at a certain moment, you put in those boundary conditions and boundary conditions nowadays are quite different than they were like 20, 30 years ago. And a number of things have to do much more with the way you recycle a product. The rare materials that are in there, the transportation, you have to get all the components together to make a product. So all those things come in play now. So in my company, we are looking at ways to reduce the impact on the earth and nature when you create a product. So when you starting to create a product, boundary conditions like that come in. So trying to make things from materials that you can find locally is, for example, the lifetime of a product. Can you recycle it or can you, for example, can you replace a battery? I’m working very small ear tips that’s put in your air and well, if the battery is dead, do you have to then just waste the product, these kind of things? Yeah, we did not think about that 30 years ago, but now we really taking that into consideration also in the creative process already.

Jayme Cellitioci:
We got the most amazing email this fall. So it was from one of our Camp Invention participants, mothers. She was describing what the family was going through with Hurricane Helene and the storm and power outages and, you know, impacts on their house and on their vehicles. And her son took his glow box that he had made at Camp Invention. He pulled apart the circuitry from it and he created something totally brand new that was able to light up the counter enough for them to make sandwiches. And he exclaimed to his mother, he said, see, I told you I was born to create. And so now what I’m seeing over time is that what maybe 15 years ago was considered enrichment programming, now I’m seeing incredible creative problem solving around survival and thrival skills. And along with that globox, which had some unique science behind it, we actually, it was based on the CRISPR Cas9 gene editing technology.

Jayme Cellitioci:
We wanted to be able to make science like this tangible for our younger participants. So we have an axolotl named Gary, and the kids are trying to figure out how Gary got his glow. And so they learn about CRISPR technology. They learn about GFP or green fluorescent protein along the way. So pretty heavy concepts presented in a really fun, engaging way that they ultimately make this glow box that has slides. So one of my colleagues, Dr. Jen Sitten, she really worked hard on making this amazing box. And I was watching that a young boy was asking her, can I take this with me after camp? And she said, yes.

Jayme Cellitioci:
And, you know, he asked a few times. And I was wondering, okay, yes, you could take this. In fact, you can take even more. We ended up hearing this story that his family had had a fire and they were living at a motel, and he essentially had no items with him. And this glow box was going to be this object that was just his and it was going to be his nightlight. So the reason why he was so curious about taking it. So, of course, you know, we did send, you know, away with 20 glow boxes and plenty more items. It really struck me that children’s connections with their inventions, we just have no idea where they’ll go with that.

Cyndi Burnett:
What a beautiful story, Jamie. Thank you for. For sharing that.

Matthew Worwood::
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Cyndi Burnett:
Curiosity to Create is a nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging professional development for school districts and empowering educators through online courses and personal coaching.

Matthew Worwood::
And if you’re craving a community of creative educators who love new ideas, don’t miss out on their creative thinking network. Get access to monthly webinars, creative lesson plans, and a supportive community, all focused on fostering creativity in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett:
To learn more, check out curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes. For this episode, we do have to wrap up our conversation. However, we do end every episode with the following question that I’d love both of you to answer. Can you share your most creative educational experience? It could be formal or informal. It could be at any age where you were the teacher or the student. And tell us a little bit about that experience and why it was creative and what impact it had on you.

Jaap Haartsen:
So it actually was the experience I had as a student, as myself. So I think that was four years ago now. I think because I’m in the 60s now, and that was at a university. And, well, at that age, I was like a sponge, sucking in all the information that was provided to me. But all those pieces are always separate. So I had these separate courses on specific topics. But later in my studies and also in my career, I saw all those pieces coming together, and that was really an experience that I saw. Okay, this is what it’s all about.

Jaap Haartsen:
To integrate all that knowledge together in my brain based on the separate topics, which I never matched together at that point in time. And, yeah, that also helped me later in my career to search for new knowledge and adding that knowledge and information and fitting it what was already in my. My head. So the fact that I started out with loose things, but it all came together. Yeah, that. That was some kind of experience I never get. And I really appreciate what I. But I found out.

Matthew Worwood::
Before we go to Jamie, though, I do. I do want to make a really quick connection that, to a certain extent, summarizes some of the stuff we spoke about in the previous episode and around things like research. But Arthur Cropley, who is a creativity researcher, I love this quote. He says, knowledge is a world to which ideas are drawn. And I think that whenever we’re kind of engaging students in the process of trying to solve problems and invent things, we cannot underestimate how important existing and previous knowledge is. Which is exactly what you had referenced in a previous response on this interview. But I think it speaks clearly to the fact that you’ve identified that as one of your most impactful learning experiences.

Jaap Haartsen:
And I also see that, well, education and getting the knowledge into the people on a higher level will raise the entire society and humanity and also gives us then a way of not using the technologies in the wrong way. So knowledge, and also dispersing this knowledge overall, because we talked about these technologies, that may scare us, but the technology itself does not scare me. But the knowledge gap between the people that know and the people that don’t know, that gap is being bigger and getting bigger and bigger. And that scares me much more than the technologies themselves.

Jayme Cellitioci:
So when I think about some of my most creative experiences and moments, there’s something that comes to mind. Recently, we were actually able to bring our National Inventors hall of Fame education programs to Zambia. And we had set up a zoom call to be able to have one of our collegiate inventors and also an inductee interact with the students in Zambia, in which we were able to set up a zoom call so that one of our collegiate inventors and one of our inductees could engage with the youth that were part of this particular program that we were offering. And what was incredible was as soon as our collegiate inventor, a woman named Charu, came on screen, I could hear all of the children had this and I’m sorry, it was an all girls program that we were running and they had this audible gasp. And I think that being able to connect with a younger entrepreneur was so powerful to them. And the entire conversation kind of maintained that energy. And they had so many specific questions for her. But it just really reminded me a of all of the creativity it takes to be able to run a program in another country and all of the getting all the materials and looking at what content is going to resonate the best and be the best experience.

Jayme Cellitioci:
So I think there was so much creativity behind the scenes along the way, and then the exchange that happened really stands out in my mind.

Cyndi Burnett:
Wow, that is so lovely and a great way to wrap up this episode. So I just want to thank you from both Matt and I so much for this time that you’ve given us today to share with us about your work yop in terms of invention and what you’ve accomplished. So, and Jamie, thank you so much for joining us to tell us all about all the great work that you’re doing and the work that you’re doing collaboratively as well. So thank you for your time today. We really appreciate your insights. We know that our listeners are going to love these two episodes, the special Double Espresso.

Matthew Worwood::
And I think particularly for those of you who are listening and you know someone in STEM steam, but more importantly, someone who wants to develop and design a learning experience that engages students in the act of creating and making. I think this is a really great episode for you to look in and maybe think a little bit more about some of the ethical considerations that we’ve spoken about and how potentially that that knowledge piece, both in terms of the inventor’s knowledge, but also the user’s knowledge, might be a factor that is considered as students engage in that creative process. My name is Dr. Matthew Worwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. You’ve been listening to the Fueling Creativity and Education podcast, hosted by Matthew Worwood and Cindy Burnett. Our creative producer is Catherine Fu. Our editor is Sam Atkins.

Matthew Worwood::
And.

Cyndi Burnett:
And this episode was made possible thanks to our sponsor, curiosity, to create.