Measuring Innovation?

I have just returned from Teaching & Learning 2014 in Washington, D.C. My head is full of new thoughts and ideas that will trickle their way out onto blogs in the next several days (or weeks). The idea of innovation is one that I have spent quite a bit of time contemplating over the last couple of years, in fact the session that I led was "Are you integrating or innovating with technology in the classroom?" One thing that I have learned is that there are so many nuances to innovation that we all have different definitions of what it is and how it looks in our classrooms.

However, in Bill Gates' plenary, while promoting innovative thinking, he made the statement that we needed to find a way to measure innovation. I sent this tweet:

 

and then this one 

Asking the question, "Is it possible?" bounced around in my head as I prepared to lead my presentation, an active discussion on innovation in the classroom with the support of technology. Based on my experience, innovation is a quality that can be nurtured much like creativity; by making it measurable means that we are going to take that quality and standardize it, which in essence extinguishes it. 

While these thoughts marinated, I attended Tony Wagner's Saturday morning plenary. His entire speech was so "tweetable" with revelations on innovation and how we, as educators, can foster it within our students. One thing that he said really resonated with me and my "bouncing question" was that innovators are critical thinkers. Critical thinkers are those that ask the right questions. Innovation is a team sport dedicated to removing the boundaries of content disciples in order to create, not simply consume content. 

As a teacher, we become a coach who empowers and enables students to ask deep, meaningful questions. We dedicate time for students to connect with one another, face-to-face and digitally, in order to ask one another questions, find solutions, share ideas, and push each other to new levels of thinking. We blur content areas lines because in life rarely is a problem dedicated strictly to academic discipline. Answers are found where content areas meet. We let them explore, discover, and create because it is not about finding one right answer. It's about empowering learners to take control of their learning, build meaning, and make a difference in the world.

So is it possible to measure innovation like we attempt to measure everything else in education? Absolutely not! It will take shape in each of our students in different ways. We will see it manifested over time with our coaching, encouraging,  and support. With respect to Bill Gates, what he is proposing is counterproductive to innovation itself. True innovation cannot (should not) be measured. It can be nurtured to flourish in each of our learners. So as we enter our classroom this week, let's put on the proverbial coach's whistle and get to coaching our students in their ability to ask questions. We have no idea what innovative idea is out there waiting to be discovered by one of our learners.

Welcome to the Land of If...Reflections on Innovation Day

What if students had the power to choose what they wanted to learn?

What if learners had the ability to choose how they learned?

What if our students could choose how to share their learning?

What if we lived in a world where a student's ability to think, imagine, 

and create carried more weight than standardized test scores?

What if....

As teachers, I think we often live in this Land of If. If only...fill in the blank. We know that our students' learning should be meaningful with connections to authentic, real world purposes, but it seems like in so many of our schools, we have so many mandates, practices and procedures our ability to teach (and our students' ability to learn) is shackled.

What can we do to help our students reach their maximum potential? My answer to this question came three years ago from Josh Stumpenhorst and Pernille Ripp as I saw their tweets and blogs about Innovation Day. Using their inspiration, the first two years, I facilitated an Innovation Day with my single group of students. With me changing schools this year, I knew there would be a greater challenge. I now teach three different groups of students in a middle school setting. When I presented the idea of Innovation Day, the wonderful, willing-to-try-anything team of 6th grade teachers embraced the idea of us planning an Innovation Day for the entire grade...200 students.

This day puts the students' completely in charge of their learning for one full school day. With the use of a planning sheet and one-on-one conferring with their ELA teachers, each student selected a wondering question or topic about which they have no knowledge, but they had a high interest in exploring. They devised a plan for creating a product to share with their peers to teach about what they learned. As teachers, we know that there is power in being able to not only learn something, but to turn around and teach others about it. Their topic, process for learning, and product were all in their own hands.

Welcome to the Land of If. On Innovation Day, students were grouped by similar topic with a teacher who could lend their expertise, if needed. Our learners engaged in a full day of learning, imagining, and creating only taking breaks to attend their elective class, PE, and lunch. By the end of the day, we had 200 phenomenal projects as diverse as our students.

The following day, students each took two minutes to share their learning with their peers. After about an hour of presentations, one of my learners said, "I can't believe how much I've learned in just one hour." All of the learners were excited by the passion exhibited by their peers. Although the students remained respectful of one another, they struggled to maintain focus for all of the presentations. After speaking with my teammate, Shelly Huver, who recommended that we turn their presentations into a gallery walk next year giving the learners the opportunity to learn and share at their own pace.

There were moments these two days where I felt that what I was witnessing was surreal. Had I fallen into an alternate universe where students were highly motivated while employing higher level thinking linked hand-in-hand with creativity? No, we had given students the opportunity to pursue their own interests. We gave them the opportunity to put into practice all the skills we had instilled in them this year. We had simply gotten out of their way and let them soar.

One of my colleagues, Lindsay Kilgore, came into our classroom and asked me the question that prompted the thoughts in this blog, "What if we could do this every day?" What if, indeed. Imagine the possibilities if we let our students drive.

Time to Innovate...Our Innovation Day

What is Innovation Day? Innovation Day was born in the business world and originally called a FedEx Day (because it’s delivered in 24 hours or less). Anyone who has read Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, is familiar with this concept which increases productivity and motivation among their employees while fostering creative thinking and problem solving. The employees are given employees the time to explore new and creative ideas during the regular work day. These ideas made their way into the innovative classrooms of Josh Stumpenhorst and Pernille Ripp (and into my Google Reader).

An activity that gives students the ability to drive their own learning and fosters creative thinking and problem solving is an opportunity that I really want to provide to my students. They would be given one day to learn about any subject that interested them...one that we didn't study in school. I knew this concept was new to everyone involved…administrators, parents, and students. Because we are a nontraditional classroom, I knew my students would be the easiest to prepare for this activity, but as we know, often other adults are the last ones to try a new idea. I went to our new administrator and explained the Innovation Day concept with the proposed learning outcomes. I asked if we could have one day out of strict schedule to try this out. Thankfully, she agreed. Thanks to Pernille, I adapted her pre-planning sheet to send home to the parents. I also sent an email explaining the concepts and my learning objective to the parents. Every parent supported our day and returned the pre-planning sheets signed.

Now it was time to prepare the students. As with so many activities in the classroom, I knew that the success of this day really depended on how well the students had prepared before the actual day. About two weeks before our Innovation Day, we began reading Mistakes that Worked by Charlotte Foltz Jones. This fascinating book includes a host of daily items that we enjoy daily that were created by accident. They are organized into short stories which worked well with our schedule. This book fostered some amazing, deep discussion about creativity, pursuing your passion, and thinking outside of the box. 

That discussion spurred my learners into looking into other innovators that impacted their lives every day. They began drawing comparisons between these different people and the qualities that they had in common. My students wanted to publish their findings, so we turned to ClassTools.net's Fakebook maker. They had a blast create these Fakebook pages of the innovators they had been researching.

Then it was time for them to select a topic that they wanted to spend one day becoming the expert on and creating the project to share with their peers. We spent some time conferring. There were a lot of probing, guiding questions here as many of them we stumped when it came time for them to choose any subject that interested them. They seemed overwhelmed with all of the possibilities. After some conversation, everyone narrowed down their topic, filled in their planning sheet, and had their parents sign it.

One thing that I hadn't anticipated was that they were so excited, that many of them started their projects at home. Some of them spent hours researching and working because they wanted to learn more. When the day arrived, the excitement was palpable. Our classroom was a flurry of diligent students focused on their tasks and all of their supplies spread into every nook and cranny of our room.

http://ramsaysclassinnovationday.wikispaces.com/

Here are some of the projects:

1. Testing combinations of all natural fruit juices to create a healthy way to season food
2. The invention of a 31-day medication dispenser (no medication was used)
3. The history of handbags with an Animoto movie
4. An original play complete with props, costumes, and sets
5. Eight pieces of art with different medium inspired by Claude Monet
6. A model of a hydroelectric plant
7. A diorama of a spider's habitat
8. A battle scene from a World War 1
9. Prezi of Jackie Robinson
10. Flipchart of the life of Elvis Presley
11. Three scarves made out of recycled materials with a digital how to slideshow 
12. A balanced meal plan
13. Handmade fleece pillow and blanket
14. Voki and ProProfs Quiz on Jesse Owens
15. A mural of a clownfish with an accompanying lesson on a clownfish
16. A map of all of the battles of World War 2
17. An original fable published on StoryJumper
18. A book of brain teasers published on StoryJumper
19. A model house built to scale
20. A 3D model (with removable sides) of an Egyptian pyramid
21. A bird house build to fit the specific size of a red cardinal

As you can see, creativity and critical thinking flourished this day. There simply aren't enough superlatives to describe the excitement and level of engagement that my students had. As one student said, "This is a day where the teachers and students switch roles. The students become the teachers and the teachers learn about what interests the students and how they learn best."

You can find all of our Innovation Day projects, photos, testimonials (text and video), reviews of Mistakes that Worked, and their fakebook pages on our Innovation Day wiki. We hope you enjoy looking at them as much as we enjoyed creating them. The question on all of my students' lips was "Can we do this again?" Without a doubt!