Creating Innovators –Book Review

Creating Innovators The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World….wow, that’s a mouthful of a title, huh?   The title, and it’s wordiness, is a pretty good over view of the entire book. 

The author, Tony Wagner points out 3 very important things that we homeschoolers have known for years.  If you want to create kids with depth it’s as simple as:

1.  Encourage play (not video games and electronics).
2.  Encourage passion (help them to follow their interests)
3.  Encourage purpose (get them involved in the world outside their bubble).

There, I’ve summed up the entire book in three sentences.  Mr. Wagner goes into much greater depth, using much larger words, but overall the meaning is the same.  A great book for giving parents and kids the idea that greatness is achievable.  Not a particularly engaging book to me, but techno folks would love the built in videos (e-reader version) and the QR codes in the printed version.

Book Description:
In this groundbreaking book, education expert Tony Wagner provides a powerful rationale for developing an innovation-driven economy. He explores what parents, teachers, and employers must do to develop the capacities of young people to become innovators. In profiling compelling young American innovators such as Kirk Phelps, product manager for Apple's first iPhone, and Jodie Wu, who founded a company that builds bicycle-powered maize shellers in Tanzania. Wagner reveals how the adults in their lives nurtured their creativity and sparked their imaginations, while teaching them to learn from failures and persevere. Wagner identifies a pattern -- a childhood of creative play leads to deep-seated interests, which in adolescence and adulthood blossom into a deeper purpose for career and life goals. Play, passion, and purpose: These are the forces that drive young innovators.

Creating Innovators will feature its own innovative elements: more than sixty original videos that expand on key ideas in the book through interviews with young innovators, teachers, writers, CEOs, and entrepreneurs, including Thomas Friedman, Dean Kamen, and Annmarie Neal. Produced by filmmaker Robert A. Compton, the videos are embedded into the ebook edition in video-enabled eReaders and accessible in this print edition via QR codes placed throughout the chapters or via www.creatinginnovators.com.

About the Author:  Tony Wagner, author of Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World, is the first innovation education fellow at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard and the founder and former co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Wagner consults widely to public and independent schools and foundations around the country and has served as senior advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. A former high school teacher, K-8 principal, and university professor in teacher education, Wagner is a highly sought-after speaker and the author of four books, including The Global Achievement Gap.

For more information about Tony Wagner please visit http://www.tonywagner.com .

For more information about the book please visit http://www.creatinginnovators.com .

^{Disclosure:  I received a free copy of this book for review purposes only.  I received no compensation for my review.  The thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.}