#IMMOOC Season 3, Week 2 - Opportunities for Innovation

There are many things I can do to create opportunities for innovation in my leadership. One of the first is to continually reinforce that innovation isn't about technology tools, the internet, or social media, but more about how we use those things. Being able to constantly try to do things differently, better, not just to do them differently, but because it's more effective, more efficient, and has a positive impact. I believe that in the field of education, it is about being willing to ask the question 'Is this the best I can do for this or these learners?'

As a technology integration specialist, I think that it's extremely important for me to model doing the best I can do for my teacher learners. Recently, I offered a book study of Heather Dowd @heza and Patrick Green's @pgreensoup Book Classroom Management in the Digital Age. I know that teachers are very busy, but want to constantly improve their skills so I offered this over the summer, and the culminating event was a live Twitter chat with the authors. Teachers used this guide to post to Twitter and Google+. I had never moderated a Twitter chat, but thought if I want teachers to be innovative, I had to adapt, grow, and model this. And so I did. What an amazing and empowering experience to do something new, different, and to bring people together to start off the school year with fresh ideas and perspectives about management a classroom with the plethora of digital tools we now have in meaningful ways.

The results were remarkable. The teachers were sharing their thoughts through social media and creating meaning while sharing their learning. The Twitter chat was a lot of fun, and I did something new, something I'd always wanted to do. I was inspired and also had support from Heather Dowd to do this. Without those two things, I'd have never tried it.

#IMMOOC Season 3, Week 1

To me, simply put, the purpose of education is to learn to love learning. One of the things that concerns me the most about education today is that kids complain about being bored (perhaps students today are just now willing to say that out loud when in the past the weren't) and that they aren't engaged in their education. 

If we don't encourage and instill the love of learning to our students, I believe we will never be 'successful' in education. While I might be challenged on this, as a classroom teacher I was successful at getting students to stop saying things like "I just can't do math" or "I hate writing", not out of fear, but because I challenged them, told them it would be hard, but that I believed in them and was willing to support them wherever they were in their learning. The results were remarkable.

When questioned later in the year, I heard comments like "Well I don't love writing, but it's okay and I'm getting better at it," and "Thanks. I didn't know I could learn math." In overcoming these thoughts about themselves as learners, they were set up to learn anything, because they had experienced that they could change. To me, that is the crux of engaging my students, which comes with the utmost vulnerability as a teacher and as a student. We have to have a community of learners that trust each other, that are willing to fail, learn, unlearn, relearn, and grow. If we don't have community, we'll never be able to build this love of learning. 

That's part of why I'm so excited for this #IMMOOC, because I get to build this community with new people and not be afraid to try new things and grow myself.