So, like many other folks these days, I’ve been getting excited about the possiblities of UStream, but I also have been wondering about how we might leverage this in the classroom in ways that really take advantage of this twin notions of audience and interaction. As a result, what you see is SLA’s first foray into interactive broadcasting… I stopped by one of our tech electives to show them the tool (and we were joined by another class after a few minutes), and I sent out a Twitter message to my network, and suddenly an interactive broadcast was born. I did forget to start recording for the first ten minutes, so this stream joins the conversation mid-talk.

There are some real flaws with the broadcast, mostly that the mic was next to me, and I’m talking in "teacher voice," so I’m rather overpowering on the video compared to the kids’ voices, I need to turn off the Skype noises, because they are distracting, and I think we need a wireless mic so that the kids can be heard better… (and I think IRC is getting blocked by the school district, which makes using UStreams chat session impossible) but given that it was a spur of the moment thing, it’s really an interesting thing to listen to.

Now, one, there’s the really cool, "Hey, our kids can carry on a conversation with people from all over the world!" factor, but more than that, we focused this conversation on school reform, and our kids had incredibly powerful things to say about how they see SLA and how it’s different for them.

One of the things that really does come through is that, for our kids, the technology comes second. They love the laptops, and they get how it helps them learn, but first, it’s about the teachers and the projects and the ethos of the school and about the unified way in which we learn. As Leah says, "We don’t come to school for a laptop, we come here because of the way we learn."

They see it, they get it, and they believe in it. There are those folks out there who think that teenagers cannot be powerfully meta-cognitive, that they won’t take the time to think about the way they learn best. I’d like to sit anyone who thinks that way down for an hour with SLA kids. I’d love anyone who thinks that test-driven learning is the way to go to listen to Kiana speak about why projects are harder — because they require students to push their own learning, as opposed to just taking someone else’s test.

As we think about 21st Century tools and reforming education, we need to remember that we use the tools to leverage the relationships, to extend the relationships, to push a progressive, inquiry-driven, understanding-driven, project-based way of teaching and learning, but without the pedagogy, the tools are nowhere near as powerful.

If you don’t believe me, listen to the kids. They say it better than I ever will.

Some interesting quotes:

Stella Gassaway from Stellarvisions wrote as a comment on my last post, "One of our key beliefs at Stellarvisions : Innovation is about managing change."

Woody Allen said, "If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative."

Ken Robinson in his TEDTalk called creativity: "If you aren’t prepared to be wrong, you’ll never do anything original." and again, "Creative [is] having original ideas of value."

and Larry Ellison once said, "When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts."

There was a fair amount of discussion after my last post, and a few folks wrote and said something along the lines of, "Yes, but how do we get there?" I think, on some level, that’s a tough task because innovation is hard to plan for, but also must be planned for. Fun paradox, eh?

In the end, innovation can happen in the unlikeliest of places, but with that, here are some things I think we can do in our schools to set up a structure where innovation is more apt to happen.

1) Create time for play — innovation happens when people have the time to experiment, play, and don’t feel rushed and harried all the time. This also means that you can’t always be in crisis mode, because why the pedagogy of necessity does occasionaly yield some really amazing gems, it, in the end, does not encourage innovation because nothing is being done with much forethought, it’s just about trying to solve problems and then move on to the next problem… which brings me to my next point:

2) Create a reflective culture. You have to create the time to think about what you’ve done. Give time for journaling, discussion, reflection, and then use what comes out of those sessions to move you forward. (This is a pet peeve of mine, actually. I’ve seen some places where there is time given to reflection, but whatever the journal entry was, it was just filed in a drawer or a folder and forgotten about. This is one more reason to use technology — instant recall. The journaling we do at SLA happens on Moodle, and then I can go back and pull up entries and examine them when I’m doing more planning. Amazing how helpful that is!)

3) Encourage calculated risk-taking. I added the calculated, because we need to be smart about how much we push forward and how we do it. In the words of Christian Long — Carpe Diem, but don’t die. This means asking what could go wrong and trying to plan for it. This is one of the major reasons to ask "What’s the worst consequence of your best idea?"

4) Realize that innovation is different than change. Innovation is change with a positive moment. Innovation is change with forethought. Innovation is change with purpose. Innovation is change with a goal. These are important distinctions. Always asking, "Why would we do this differently," forces us to examine our motivations, our goals, our reasons for change. That’s a good thing.

5) Celebrate and publicize successes — if you find something that works, let the world know. Do it for several reasons. One, it’s a great recognition of the people who took the risk. Two, innovation needs to spread. That only happens when we share. Three, other people might take your idea and make it better. That’s very good too.

6) Talk about your failures openly. The old chestnut, "Learn from your mistakes" is still true. And again, others might learn as well… and might give you that one piece of advice / insight that moves a mistake into an innovation.

7) Do NOT become reactionary. You have to know that progress isn’t linear and isn’t always a pure rising line. Expectations are important to manage. If every misstep causes a retreat, then innovation will die.

Learn from others. Learning is networked. Innovation is networked. Read, talk, listen. Blog about ideas. Go to conferences. Read journals and books — not just on education.

9) Mash-ups can lead to something new. Take ideas from everywhere, tie them to the vision of your school or your classroom, and then build something completely new.

Which brings me to my last thought…

10) Be prepared to be transformed. Truly innovative ideas are not additive, they are transformative. They should cause us to rethink the way we teach and learn and live. If you want to be innovative realize that a) you will never anticipate all the ways an innovative idea will change you, and b) you will have to be ready to give up some of your sacred cows along the way.

I wish I could say that I’m great at everything on this list. I’m not. It’s also probably not an exhaustive list, but these are the ideas that I’ve been grappling with since I wrote my last post and realized that I probably needed to define the "How" a bit more.

What else would you add to the list?