- Learning and Innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow
- To be used a number of times...
- There is no substitute for a teacher who design authentic, participatory, and relevant learning experiences for her unique population of students. The role of the teachers is to inspire learning and develop skills and mindsets of learners. A teacher as designer and facilitator, should continually evolve with resources, experiences, and the support of a community. It is becoming increasingly clear that we do not necessary need to transform the role of teachers, rather create a culture that inspires and empowers teachers to innovate in the pursuit of providing optimal learning experiences for their students
- Innovative teaching is constant evolution to make things better for student learning
- It is not teachers who are at the center of the classroom, but students- not as a whole, but as individuals.
- Thinking about how, what and why we teach a lesson or skills helps ensure that we provide rich learning opportunities for our students
- When we think differently about the things that we are used to seeing daily, we can create innovative learning opportunities.
- We need to move beyond the idea that an education is something that is provided for us toward the idea that an education is something we create for ourself (Stephen Downes (2010))
- Be aware. Your degree is not a proxy for your ability to do any job. The world only cares about what you can do with what you know ( and it does not care how you learned it.)
- Success for our students - and for ourselves -is not about how much we know, how efficient our systems are, or even the score our students earn. It is as Friedman wrote, about " what you an do with what you know". Information is abundant; it's common. What's uncommon, and desparately needed in today's education system, is the innovator's mindset.
Questions for discussions
1. What are some examples of innovation that you have seen within constraints, both inside and outside of schools?
2. What questions do you think are vital to understanding those who we serve in education?
3. If you were to start a school from scratch, what would it look like?
4. How do we take what we currently have to create a better education system for our entire community.
- For years, school have posed questions or problems to students, often in a linear model that forces them to follow certain steps to find the answer. The world is not step-by-step or linear; it's complex and often requires a messy solution. Sometimes it takes several attempts and iterations to solve real-life problems, and sometimes, there are several correct answers. But solving a problem is only one part of learning. Educational thought leader Ewan McIntosh notes that finding the problem is an essential part of learning - one that students miss out on when we pose the problem to them first.
- Currently the world's educational systems are crazy about problem-based learning, but they're obsessed with the wrong bit of it. While everyone looks at how we could help young people become better problem-solvers, we're not thinking how we could create a generation of problem finders,
- Learning is creation, not consumption, Knowledge is not something a learner absorbs, but something a learner creates. Learning happens when a learner integrates new knowledge and skill into his or her existing structure of self. Learning is literally a matter of creating new meanings, new neural networks, and new patterns of electro/ chemical interactions within one total's brain/ body system
- Resilience is necessary trait for innovators, but it's also a skill that all humans need to develop. Life is full of ups and downs. How you recover from failure and move forward is important to how you learn and how you live. As you push the edges of the norm with your innovative ideas, hold on to your conviction and passion.
SCHOOL VS LEARNING
- School promotes staring by looking for answers. Learning promotes starting with questions ( can be changed into School promotes developing your own questions and finding answers)
- School is about consuming. Learning is about creating.
- School is about finding information on something prescribed for you. Learning is about challenging perceived norms
- School is scheduled at certain times. Learning can happen any time, all of the time.
- School often isolates. Learning is often social.
- School is standardized. Learning is personal.
- School teaches us to obtain information from certain people. Learning promotes that everyone is a teacher, and everyone is a learner.
- School is about giving you information. Learning is about making your own connections.
- School is sequential. Learning is random and non-linear.
- School promotes surface-level thinking. Learning is about deep exploration.
CRITICAL THINKERS
The factory model of education forces students to be compliant and basically do "as they were told". Compliance does not help children remember lessons long term, but it can create an attitude that follows them well into adulthood. One of my best friends, and my first admin partner, asked me to never allow him to go out on his own with his ideas without questioning them and sharing my thoughts. His reason? He wanted the best ideas, not just his ideas. He wanted me to ask questions and challenges ideas to ensure they were successful. It was not his ego that led him but his desire to see his staff and students flourish.
Critical thinking is also important because we live in a world where information is abundant- something that is both a benefit and detriment. Having so many ideas and facts at their fingertips is helpful for students - as long as they understand how they discern truth from fiction and know why it's important to consider the source of the information. That's why author and blogger Hogward Rheingold emphasizes the importance of "crap detection". He explains, " it's up to you to sort the accurate bits from the misinfo, disinfor, spam, scam, urban legends, and hoaxes. "Crap detection", as Hemingway called it a half century ago is more important than ever before.
We need to teach students to respectfully ask questions and empower them to challenge simply for the sake of it.
