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innovation

Dec 19 2014

5 things to post in your classroom as reminders

This recent article, shared via @PeteGretzGCPS is an interesting read, about how to prepare students for innovation outside of school. I’d recommend taking the five suggestions on taping them up near where we plan lessons or even in our classrooms, as reminders of how we ought to be designing instruction for students.

  1. Play – learning can be fun and we need to give opportunities for play in our classrooms.
  2. Curiosity – inquiry will drive deeper learning and we need to develop and use student curiosity to fuel learning.
  3. Passion – when we think of personalization, we first need to know what our students are interested in and then find opportunities to match learning with these passions.
  4. Fearlessness – we can’t be afraid to make mistakes. We learn from them.
  5. Purpose – the work students take on need purpose; students should be working for making change rather than a grade.

These aren’t easy to do each and every day. But I was struck with how these qualities for promoting innovation also so closely align with deeper learning!

By John Hendron • Learning for Teachers • • Tags: deeperlearning, innovation

Nov 3 2012

Innovation

The term “innovation” is often now used in education-speak, especially in combination with technology. And not everyone agrees about what it is.

Innovation for a Purpose

As part of my work with the Virginia Society for Technology in Education, where I serve on the board of directors, we try to un-cover what innovation is, in its many guises. One way we do that is to recognize a “Innovator of the Year” in education here in Virginia. They’ll receive this honor later in December. I won’t reveal here who it is, but it’s a school administrator from Loudoun County. She was nominated along with many other well-deserving, innovative educators. But the “flavor” of innovation was different, in almost every case.

Since I led the effort in collecting nominations, organizing my committee to review submissions, and then to vote on who they thought, ultimately, deserved the award, I took a back-seat and watched. I didn’t vote, but let my colleagues weigh-in. I did, however, put in my fair share of work. I had to normalize the process with my own definition of innovation.

I like what I read from Sir Ken Robinson earlier this year, and borrowed his concept for innovation: applied creativity. For the layman, the innovative educator is someone who works “outside the box.” They may think differently, try different things, and likely they’re the kind of person who isn’t stuck in just one or two ways on how to get something done. They refine and reflect, and go about tasks again, looking for ways to optimize, improve, and tweak. If this describes you, then you may well be an innovative educator, yourself. We have a few, I am sure, without reservation.

Is being innovative important? Critical? I think it is, especially so today. I recently have been studying the concept of student engagement in a more scholarly way, and I’ve had some great discussions about this concept with Drs. Gretz and Geyer. We’re interested in capturing observable student engagement in either a quantifiable or qualitative way. Ultimately, however, what matters is that

  1. We know how to engage students, and
  2. we know what stands in our way.

It requires some creativity to get there, and I think the onus is on all of us to exercise some innovation on using this concept towards helping students even more. Innovation is the grease on the wheels that lets us swerve fast to avoid a pothole, it’s using our imagination to take a new road to create a detour, sometimes it’s using a tool to help us be more efficient and mindful. If you’re reading this, I’d charge you to think about ways you tap into innovation to make your life or your job better.

By John Hendron • General News • • Tags: innovation

May 17 2011

Innovation

What is?

I often times struggle with the term “innovation.” It sounds expensive. But I think it’s a very positive word. Especially when we feel we’re faced with problems.

Solutions mute problems, but often times, the solutions we need aren’t at the ready… we need to innovate.

As a technologist, I struggle too, because the gadget gene in me is drawn to new and shiny things. But I had a really good, common sense discussion with some of my fellow VSTE members about innovation in this most recent VSTE podcast.

65 minutes is a long time, but consider putting this on your phone or iPod. I actually learned a lot in the discussion I had with Tom from Henrico, Becky from Albemarle, and Karen from Winchester.

By John Hendron • Learning for Teachers • • Tags: innovation, podcast, VSTE

Oct 15 2010

Innovative Learning Fall 2010

A new edition of Innovative Learning, published by an ISTE special interest group, is now available online in PDF.

It’s always interesting to see what others are up to across the country (and world), as there’s always more to learn!

By John Hendron • Learning for Teachers • • Tags: innovation, iste, sig

Jun 7 2010

Role of Innovation in Tech and Education

As a member and director of VSTE, I’ve been involved with its newest special interest group, focused on innovation. Today (June 7, 2010), we published our first white paper on innovation in education.

Membership in VSTE has a benefit for all educators and education administrators. One of the benefits is connecting with other educators across the commonwealth with an interest in getting the most out of each school’s investment in technology.

Download the Innovations Whitepaper online. The paper includes quotes from a few Goochland educators, plus many others from across the state.

By John Hendron • Resource of Interest • • Tags: innovation, VSTE

About this blog…

This is the blog of John Hendron, Ed.D., director of innovation & strategy for Goochland County Public Schools. Through this blog I share information for teachers, administrators and families dealing with learning and teaching with technology.

You can contact me via e-mail! I look forward to hearing from you.

John Hendron Goochland Schools

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