Innovator Insights

A What If... resource for teachers and students.

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What drives Nebraska’s innovators, big thinkers, risk takers? How do they think? What influences their ideas? Who have they learned from?

We explore this in Innovator Insights, an educational toolkit that empowers students to answer their own What If...?

This collection includes videos where kids ask the questions, innovators share their experience, and together students collaborate using design thinking to bring their own innovative ideas to life. This collection contains two separate units appropriate for different developmental levels.

Innovator Insights Jr. helps students in grades 3-5 to explore how to:

  • Understand and Identify Problems and Opportunities
  • Creatively Problem Solve
  • Test and Share an Idea

Innovator Insights guides students in grades 6-8 & 9-12 as they more deeply engage with entrepreneurship through these processes:

  • Think Like an Innovator
  • Understanding and Identifying Problems and Opportunities
  • Creative Problem Solving
  • Testing and Sharing an Idea
  • Making a Business Plan and Finding a Mentor

Innovator Insights Jr.

Grades 3-5

Viewing Guides

Use these viewing guides alongside the Innovator Insights Jr. videos to guide students through each lesson. All viewing guides include vocabulary, key questions, and learning goals aligned with the steps in the design thinking process.

Lesson Plans

These lesson plans are resources for educators to plan and implement a unit to guide students through the design thinking process and create using their own ideas.

Design Challenges

Use these graphic organizers and additional educational resources with students to help them organize their thoughts as they ideate, design, and problem solve. The final products from the design challenges are fantastic artifacts to demonstrate learning and help students identify their growth as innovators.

Innovator Insights

Grades 6-8, 9-12

Viewer Guides

Use these viewing guides alongside the Innovator Insights Jr. videos to guide students through each lesson. All viewing guides include vocabulary, key questions, and learning goals aligned with the steps in the design thinking process.

Lesson Plans

These lesson plans are resources for educators to plan and implement a unit to guide students through the design thinking process and create using their own ideas.

Design Challenges

Use these graphic organizers and additional educational resources with students to help them organize their thoughts as they ideate, design, and problem solve. The final products from the design challenges are fantastic artifacts to demonstrate learning and help students identify their growth as innovators.

Additional Videos