ODD SOCKS: Innovation and Upcycling

We had a five hour drive home from Paris today, so I bombarded my husband with podcasts for the whole journey. One I listened to for the first time comes from Stanford University, and is called Stanford Innovation Lab. 
The episode we first listened to looked at a design challenge - getting people to think of innovative uses for our odd socks!

Some of the ideas that their listeners came up with included;

• dog toys
• marble bags
• hospital socks to comfort babies in ICUs
• reusable coffee filters
• mood bracelets
• drinks holders
• hand warmers
• sweat collectors (for companies that need sweat for their studies... I am guessing medical, beauty, and sports wear companies!
• balls
• diapers
• seedling holders
• dating websites (named Footsie or Glass Slipper)

I've had students come up with ideas for uses of paper clips, coffee cups and straws, but want to do this more regularly. I thought it would be a good way to expose students to IDEO's brainstorming rules - we use these now and then, but I want students to be more familiar with these, especially encouraging wild ideas, going for quantity and being visual when brainstorming.

• ​Image link​ and IDEO brainstorming

I also think it is an opportunity to use some visible thinking routines for generating ideas more regularly too. The four I really want my students to become more familiar with are:

• generate sort connect elaborate
• question starts
• creative questions
• options explosion

Some design challenges:

I'm not sure yet if I will use the challenges for one off lessons, quick brain breaks or starter activities - I will also get them to think of additional items, that we waste at school, which could be transformed. 
My students are just finishing off their current units at the moment, so I probably won't get to use this for a couple of weeks, but wanted to share it anyway. Here is a link to the presentation and below I have embedded it for you to browse through. Feel free to use, and let me know what your students come up with!