DESIGNED FOR LEARNING
: In case you haven’t heard... something exciting happened at the
New England Association for Schools and Colleges
annual conference in Burlington (MA). At this year’s NEASC event, the leadership team placed their conference focus squarely on accreditation goal #1:
School Culture
. And the key strategy for achieving a positive school culture?
Design Thinking
.
This alignment comes as no surprise to members of the InnovateK12 community. An important component of Design Thinking is the way in which this approach to problem-solving empowers all those involved in ways that elevate a school culture or classroom culture.
Today’s school leaders are turning to Design Thinking as a leadership strategy because it resonates with Gen Z and Millennials (
read more
)
CRITICAL: BUILDING AN INNOVATION TEAM:
One question that we get asked quite often at InnovateK12 is how to build an innovation team. This is a key step in the process, and it requires that you design with careful intention. Getting the right chemistry on your team is essential to early-stage success, and you may find that your needs shift as your work becomes more sophisticated or operational.
Whether you're launching from a district perspective or from a site perspective, it's important for a senior leader to organize and lead the Innovation Team. Organizing and empowering this team is an important step in the process.
As a reference to the second step of John Kotter’s eight-step change model, let’s refer to this team as the
Guiding Team
because they will guide the process (
read more
).
INNOVATION. BUZZWORD OF THE DECADE?
Here’s how Planview Spigit opened their 2019 annual report:
Innovation. Perhaps the most often heard and spoken word in corporate meeting rooms. Wired Magazine called innovation “The Most Important and Overused Word in America” and The Wall Street Journal declared innovation to be “a strong contender for the crown of business buzzword of the decade.” Yet innovation is also this decade’s imperative.
So, how do you go beyond the buzz and breathe innovation into every corner of your company? How do you take innovation and broaden its meaning from something you talk about to something you do, every day?
Bold? A little bit. But I like it. When you lead a company with the word “innovation” in the name, you have to suffer through more than your fair share of eye-rolls. But sometimes the truth hurts. Especially in education, where people will either roll their eyes or, even worse, offer a blank stare.
Most of the InnovateK12 community knows that we use Spigit as our idea-management software to drive our innovation events, but not everyone realizes how many Fortune 100 companies use the very same software to guide innovation behind their firewalls. Either way, their 2019 report is worth a look (
read more
).
GROWING THE INNOVATEK12 NETWORK:
I realize we just made fun of the word “innovation” in the previous post, but wait... there’s more:
In Fall 2019, InnovateK12 President and Co-Founder Eric Schneider sat down with Rebecca Reed and talked about the growth of the InnovateK12 network and the need for more innovation in today’s schools. Here’s how she introduced the conversation...
Innovation. One of the most important, yet overused buzzwords of the last decade. It might just hold the keys to school transformation and deeper student learning, but what do we really mean when we say the word? And how can schools actually build it into their culture in a way that's sustainable? In this episode I talk with Eric Schneider, President and Co-Founder of
InnovateK12
about accessing the transformative power of innovation in districts, schools, and classrooms. Innovate K12 starts with the premise that the greatest sources of innovation are the stakeholders closest to students: teachers, administrative staff, custodians, bus drivers, principals - and students themselves. When these stakeholders are equally engaged through a crowd-sourcing process, you start to see magic happen.
You can find the podcast on our website’s
media
page.
DOUBLING DOWN ON NETWORKS:
It’s the time of year for predictions, so we don’t want to miss the opportunity. One of our favorite media outlets for innovation in K-12 education is the
Clayton Christensen Institute
. Christensen’s book
The Innovator’s Dilemma
is considered by many to be required reading, and the researchers working at the institute do a great job of pushing the envelope.
Two years ago, Christensen Institute author and researcher Julia Freeland Fisher predicted that
networks
would be an important innovation in the K-12 space. In 2020, she doubles down on this prediction. Take a look…
Over a decade ago, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen took his theory of Disruptive Innovation from the boardroom to the K-12 classroom. Observing the rapid rise of online courses, he predicted that online learning would radically shift education in the 21st century. Since then, the U.S. K-12 edtech market has ballooned in the past decade to an estimated $7 billion.
At its simplest, Disruptive Innovation theory describes how organizations harness technology to make a product or service more accessible to more people. Disruptive innovations start off simple and affordable. Over time, they improve to eventually overtake mainstream offerings.
Online learning has followed suit (
read more
).
