THRIVE Lab Phase 1 prototype
November 2021 to January 2023
youth, parents, educators, community members engaged in Design Club to
design & develop thrive lab tahoe @ Incline
In this first phase of the journey to develop EIC THRIVE ECOSYSTEM NV, we conducted a weekly THRIVE DESIGN CLUB in a temporary facility in Incline from September and November 2021.
The Club evaluated and selected a facility to open our first Thrive Lab at 916 Southwood Blvd starting November 2021. With a core group of 15 students and their parents, we continued weekly meetings, built out the 8 design studios and hosted open houses to inspire more students, families, teachers, and school leaders to join us and raise funds for development.
In June 2022 we moved out of Southwood location due to rent doubling and request from Incline Middle School principal and computer science and robotics teacher to conduct a Thrive Lab for their new Exploratory program on Wednesday afternoons. So we moved 10 project stations (equipment and project boards) to the computer science room at IMS and conducted Self-Preneur pilots (paper-based) with two groups of 20 students over 10 week quarters (Fall & Winter 2022-2023).
In both the Southwood facility and IMS programs, we coach youth on use of design thinking and reflecting process to understand their needs for enhanced learning and personal development to achieve full potential. Students began to learn the skills of self-reflection and self-direction with a team of peers interested in similar areas of exploration. The majority of the students enjoyed playfully creating their vision boards, drawing and creating digital and 3D versions of their ideal avatar, sharing their self-awareness about experiences of flow, and beginning to create their growth goals and digital portfolio.
Some projects that youth teams chose to do:
- creating a video channel "Kids Who Cook" - including tips on growing your own food in a hydrogarden
- 3D printing of their avatars - CAD designs arising from their vision-boarding and identification of talents and passions
- VR game design to help kids learn to collaborate - and not become too addicted
- smoothie-making competition
- lego-building competition
In January 2023, the IMS Principal said we needed to move the Thrive Lab stations out of the CS room as they needed to use it for standardized testing.
In March 2023, we moved the lab stations and equipment from IMS down to a 450 sf space inside the Gener8tor community maker space (2450 Oddie Blvd). This is also the site of the emerging Oddie District - innovative community space for Sparks.
Lessons Learned from the first pilots in Incline Village which we are incorporating into Thrive Lab @ Oddie District and Thrive Towns in Incline and Reno/Sparks include:
- a digital collaboration platform that students and coaches can and want to use is essential for an effective Self-Preneur program implementation, development, and demonstration. The paper-based worksheets, no wi-fi access, and limited classroom space and mobility of students prevented us from being able to give the students the on-line learning resources and freedom of time to develop true autonomy and agency.
- The Thrive World and Self-Preneur Game platform much enable collaborative project design and communications in-between the face-to-face time.
- Easier to use tools needed for
- More sophisticated VR design software needed than - but simpler than Unity. FRAMEVR was released after our prototype and is more suited to
- Self-Preneur Game needs to have some structured activities and reflection templates as well as open-ended project development tools so that students can practice developing and managing their own project plans, resource planning, learning aquisition, and project feedback communication with coaches, developing oof their competency portfolio and presenting learnings to the community.
- The few times we were able to go outdoors for self-reflection, snow sculpturing, and group dialogue under the trees were some of the favorite experiences reported by both students and coaches.
- In order for young people to access more like-minded peers and specialized coaches in their areas of interest, we need to create a COACHES HUB database for the region and invite all citizens to sign-up and offer their talents, care, and time to support the next generation of self-directed learnings. This will involve doing training and certification of THRIVE COACHES for metaversal projects - and drawing initial volunteers from parents, retired teachers, employees, and retirees.
INSIGHTS FOR PHASE 2 THRIVE ECOSYSTEM: As of June and July 2023, we initiated a DESIGN CLUB invitation and communication process for developing Thrive Towns in two physical locations:
- Incline Village/Crystal Bay Thrive Town - responding to WCSD saying that IMS needs to be closed due to declining enrollment.
- Oddie District Thrive Town - emerging community arts and innovation center for Sparks (transforming an old Lowe's building)
See THRIVE TOWN ODDIE DESIGN CLUB BROCHURE (link) - May 2023
See Incline Thrive Town Design Club invitation flyer (link) - July 2023
Similar to how Thrive Lab 1.0 Design Club prototype at Southwood Blvd was emerging, participants in the Phase 2 teams will form sub-teams and a coach volunteer can support youth to develop the programs and resources needed to operate and support all aspects of development.
The four areas of design are (see descriptions below)
The four areas of design are (see descriptions below)
1. SELF-PRENEUR PLAYBOOK - MASTERY GOALS This goal framework will support all students to accelerate their learning to find a fulfilling path in life. They’ll be able to customize their goals to their unique needs and aspirations. Done well, this new competency-based system for whole-person lifelong learning will serve as an alternative or even replacement for today’s diploma system. The new goals team of students will work with employers and government organizations to study and validate new competency goals and performance system. The goals will identify criteria for thriving in our world - with it’s rapidly changing and complexifying conditions. This will include studying and validating developmental rubrics, scales, and levels for all core competencies for career and global citizenship. With the help of experts in this field, students will help develop the capacity development system. These student will tap into their talents and passions and capitalize on how they learn best. This is how they become selfpreneurs: designer-creators of their best life in service to community. |
These youth will be up top date on the lastest research about human development and learning:
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As students develop their knowledge and skills through projects, the real-time assessments by coaches will confirm mastery and demonstration of learning. With multiple validations by peers and adults, records of mastery and demonstrated knowledge are formally recorded to each student’s personal capacity portfolio.
Every member of the Thrive Lab will develop their digital Self-Preneur Portfolio as their lifelong living resume/CV. It will showcase all the projects they've participated in with demonstrations of knowledge, abilities, and competencies - with feedback from expert coaches and professionals in the field. This is a comprehensive and ever-growing - evergreen - picture of a student’s strengths, skill sets, and developmental pathway.
2. FACILITY & STUDIOS DESIGN & DEVELOP
A second group of design club will focus on the needs and features for the physical learning lab and career studios. This will include identifying what equipment, technologies, and built-in features are needed as well as space needs. How many and which career technologies and programs will there be? Will there be a full Fab Lab with advanced manufacturing equipment? Will there be audio and video recording and production studios? Will there be a virtual reality experience and program design studio? Will there be an indoor wall garden or a separate biodynamic vegetable garden with fish pond? Will there be a professional kitchen and restaurant? |
Each student will work with their coach team to help create and execute their plan. They will choose their coaches from a network of teachers, advisors, experts, mentors, counselors, parents, and employer project facilitators that EIC coordinates.
A core feature of each student’s personalized learning plan is their “design my life” playbook. Younger students will explore and prototype potential career pathways through real-world projects. Older students will build their skills and credentials to serve their community and to start working with employers in their field of interest.
A core feature of each student’s personalized learning plan is their “design my life” playbook. Younger students will explore and prototype potential career pathways through real-world projects. Older students will build their skills and credentials to serve their community and to start working with employers in their field of interest.
3. PROGRAMS & PROJECTS DEVELOP
Another group of Design Club members will focus on designing the real projects that will be initially offered members of the Thrive Lab. What are the learning experiences that members seek to explore their interests and develop their Self-Preneur capaciteis and career goals? They’ll work with employers in areas of interest in order to design challenges that students can help to solve in collaboration with the employer. This group will also be helping to design and build the Coach Team Hub: a virtual platform of volunteers from the community with skills and interest to coach students doing projects. Registered coaches could include youth (peers and near-peers), parents, counselors, and mentors. A certification process will be developed to screen adults to work with youth as well as train them on the use of the project management and Thrive Lab Operating System software to be used to support project engagement, feedback, portfolio building, and learning validation. |
As students develop their facilitly and programs and turn them into business plans, they will help pitch them to funders - local and non-local, private and public.
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This group will also be involved in developing and/or adopting the Thrive Lab Operating System (TLOS) - if in prototype stage) to manage program/project registration and management, Coach Team management, and Thrive Lab studio space reservation, marketplace exchange of goods and services, and governance.
As additional Thrive Labs are established in communities across Nevada, the TLOS program will enable students and coaches to collaborate in an interdisciplinary network of experts, mentors, educators, and leaders of EIC to share programs, knowledge, technologies, and grant resources for regional and state programs.
As additional Thrive Labs are established in communities across Nevada, the TLOS program will enable students and coaches to collaborate in an interdisciplinary network of experts, mentors, educators, and leaders of EIC to share programs, knowledge, technologies, and grant resources for regional and state programs.
4. THRIVE LAB GOVERNANCE
Another group of Design Club students will work on designing the model of governance for the Thrive Lab - including the potential roles for students, coaches, and adults who participate. For example, this design team may choose to function as a student co-operative - using Micro Society 2.0 platform to manage job descriptions, currency of exchange, compensation for roles, marketplace exchange of goods and services, financial accounts for all members. As students refine their learning lab design plans into business plans, they will pitch their project to funders - local and non-local, private and public. As students refine their learning lab design plans into business plans, they will pitch their project to funders - local and non-local, private and public. |
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FOLLOW US
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CONTACT US info@eic-nv.org |
Mary Alber, Founding Director
mary.alber@eic-nv.org 775.224.3736 Priya Ahlawat, Co-Founder priya.ahlawat@eic-nv.org 774 Mays Blvd Ste #10-453, Incline Village, NV 89451 |
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