Change Management & Culture of Innovation
Change is essential for improvement.
Whether it’s a change to school strategy or the introduction of new technologies into classrooms – change is vital to achieving success.
But how does change affect teachers and students?
Manage that change and you shouldn’t have a problem according to Tariq, a head teacher who wanted to introduce laptops for students in all classrooms.
“I recognised the potential of technology to support effective learning but it was a bit of a challenge for some of my teachers. It also introduced a whole raft of issues around security, student misuse and disruption but we put measures in place; extra training, support and new processes that helped to ease the school through the transition.”
Tariq’s school ultimately embraced the change and continue to look for creative ways to meet their aims – he created a culture of innovation throughout their school by implementing effective change management..
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Change Management & Culture of Innovation HOW TO DEAL WITH CHANGE It seems that change (and there has been much of it in the last 5, 10, 15 years) frustrates many of us, and leaves us desperate for some consistency in the teaching profession. Yet, change (like anything else), is not all bad and not all good. It’s a mixed bag. What is true is that change is constant. It’s also getting exponentially quicker. This is not only in education, but in many fields of work. It’s taken a while for change to pick up the speed with which we now see it in the classroom, but...
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Change Management & Culture of Innovation How IoT Technology Could Impact Teaching and Learning in 2015 Dubbed as the most hyped technology of 2014, the “Internet of Things” (IoT) is the concept of everyday objects connecting to the Internet and each other. This includes things like “smart” thermostats, smoke detectors and even kitchen appliances. was one of the hottest topics at this week's International Consumer Electronics Show () - a premiere technology insider event with a 45+ year history. But would it surprise you to know that education is projected as one of the top sectors to be ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation THE IMPACT OF A TEACHER Most teachers know very little about what happens to the vast majority of their students. For a few months, we are front and centre in our students’ lives and then it comes to an end. Students leave, move on, transfer, graduate and, usually, we never see or hear from them again. Teaching is the great open-ended narrative, the perpetually unfinished symphony. And, like all great fragments, a good portion of it works on through our imaginations as we wonder what may have happened to former ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation Surface Pro 3 – a foundation for innovative teaching and learning. Now two months in, and the Surface Pro3 is over the initial hurdles that any new device suffers from. It has been very well received by independent reviewers and the general public alike who have purchased the device in any of its available configurations. But can it make an impact in educational circles? Whilst the previous versions of the Surface made their ways into schools, there was very little momentum built and some of this was to do with device design, some to do with marketing and some ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation DOES SUSPENDING CHILDREN REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE Recent research has found that suspension, as a disciplinary measure, has a negative effect on students, and on teacher-student relationships. A study undertaken by PhD psychology student David Quin, at the Australian Catholic University, showed that 43% of suspended students believed that their teachers were less helpful on their return to school, and only 29% said that they had received help in catching up on the work they missed during their suspension. Also of concern was the types of ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation DEVELOPING CHILDREN'S STRENGTHS. The end of year ceremonies and prizegivings can be hard for some children as they watch friends, classmates and siblings carry off prizes when they know they have worked hard too and done their best. Doing things for their own reward is a concept we learn as we grow older. While children are young, we can help them develop and grow by placing the focus on their strengths, the greatest of which are qualities of character because they are what will see them through the challenges of life. What ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation DOES CLASS SIZE HAVE ANY EFFECT? Reducing the number of pupils in a class. As the size of a class or teaching group gets smaller it is suggested that the range of approaches a teacher can employ and the amount of attention each student will achieve will increase. How effective is it? Intuitively, it seems obvious that reducing the number of pupils in a class will improve the quality of teaching and learning, for example by increasing the amount of high quality feedback or one-to-one attention learners receive. However, overall ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation SHOULD CHILDREN REPEAT A YEAR IF THEY ARE FAILING? Pupils who do not reach a given standard of learning at the end of a year are required to repeat the year by joining a class of younger students the following academic year. For students at secondary school level, repeating a year is usually limited to the particular subject or classes that a student has not passed. Repeating a year is relatively common in the USA where the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) recommended that students be required to demonstrate a set standard of achievement before...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation PASSIONATE TEACHERS Did you ever notice how much more you learn from passionate people? Whether it be a teacher, a parent, or a friend…when someone is passionate we tend to listen closer, buy in to what they are saying, and remember it later. Yet, what is often missed is the importance of passion for your subject, the young people sitting in front of you, and the pressing issues in our world. Research shows that teachers—not books, not technology, not buildings, and not even class size—are the single most powerful ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation Microsoft Expert Educators from Australia & New Zealand come together. The weekend of October 11 & 12 saw 36 educators from Australia and 12 from New Zealand undertake an immersion program at Microsoft HQ - as the first group of Microsoft Expert Educators (ANZ). Powerful ideas, sharing of learning activities, developing transformational projects were just some of the events over the 2 days. The program launch has enabled educators to return to their schools inspired and empowered. I would be interested to know what were your key take aways, what are your goals now ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation ادارة التغير مقاومة التغير بداية لابد منها لاكن الاقناع بالتغير وبيان الانعكاس الايجابي على المعلمين والطلبة حيث ان استخدام الالواح الكترونية كاحدى الامثلة بداية يجد صعوبة بالغةولاكن مع التدريب وتصوير الحصص واستخدام الادوات الموجودة في اللوح يحول الرس الى لعبة تفيد وتسهل التعلم...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation ادارة التغير مقاومة التغير بداية لابد منها لاكن الاقناع بالتغير وبيان الانعكاس الايجابي على المعلمين والطلبة حيث ان استخدام الالواح الكترونية كاحدى الامثلة بداية يجد صعوبة بالغةولاكن مع التدريب وتصوير الحصص واستخدام الادوات الموجودة في اللوح يحول الرس الى لعبة تفيد وتسهل التعلم...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation UNLEASHING YOUR POTENTIAL Savvy principals know they don’t have all the answers and know that good solutions are broadly dispersed among teachers. Principals should take advantage of this capacity by encouraging – perhaps even unleashing – the power of teachers for problem-solving and improvement-building. How do you as a leader unleash the potential of your teachers or how would you as a teacher like your leaders to encourage you to unleash your potential. What examples do you have of unleashing potential?...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation Can Teaching be taught? Came across this quote and thought it very interesting. Would really like to hear your thoughts on this. “It is deeply odd for teachers to think that teaching itself is the one thing that cannot be taught.” Robert Pondiscio in “Making Teaching Teachable” in The Education Gadfly, August 7, 2014 ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation CLASS SIZE OR TEACHER QUATITY? Read this article from Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's director for education and skills, who said that nations may have to make a trade-off between smaller classes and paying teachers more. In many cases, high-performing countries choose the latter, he said. "You can spend your money only once, so if you have a fixed amount of money that's the kind of trade-off you have to make. Basically smaller classes limit your capacity to pay teachers better, and that's the trade-off you can see in the data...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation Is the Surface Pro 3 a game changer for our teachers? Almost 2 weeks since its launch - and I have 5 arrive on my desk on the very same day - the question is do we finally have a device that could change the way we work? Microsoft have clearly learned from the feedback about the Pro 2 and have incorporated this in a new sleek design - the fact that I can have apps, I can have full scale programs and I can write with the stylus - makes it a desirable device. But how do we get deep and meaningful integration? How do we / can we change practice? How ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation UPDATE: What Does Innovation Look Like? What does Innovation look like? I first asked that question 10 weeks ago. I was presented with the wonderful opportunity to create a class that would be unlike any other in middle school in Palm Beach County, Florida. I called it the Innovation Class. A course is designed for students who wish to improve their creative thinking skills as well as their critical thinking skills. Students are studying the creative process, different types of innovation, how innovation is created, and how ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation WHAT QUALITIES DO YOU NEED TO GAIN PROMOTION “Where do you see yourself in five year’s time?” A principal was taken aback by the first-year teacher’s response to this question. “I intend to be the head of my department.” When asked what she would be doing to achieve that very ambitious goal, the teacher looked nonplussed. To her, the promotion was a natural progression requiring little input from her. The principal gently pointed out that promotion generally came after years of developing and mastering the qualities needed for ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation HOW DO PROJECT WARMTH and STRENGTH as a LEADER? Is it better to be loved or feared? The answer for school leaders is to project both warmth and competence – but that doesn’t come naturally to many people. A good start is to begin with warmth, closely followed by competence. Apparently more than 90% of our judgment upon meeting someone new comes from two areas: Their warmth, engagement, and trustworthiness – What are his or her intentions toward me? Their strength, agency, and competence – Is he or she capable of acting on those intentions...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation DO YOU USE QUIZZING TO HELP LEARNING? Three ways to help students remember what they have learned. Retrieval – When students are asked to write down everything they remember immediately after reading a text, their long-term retention of the material improves dramatically compared to students who re-read the passage. The key is quizzing students immediately after a lesson using low-key instruments that don’t raise the anxiety level. Students in classes with a regimen of regular low stakes quizzing carry their learning forward ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation GIVING STUDENT AUTONOMY How do teachers give their students more autonomy in their classrooms? What does autonomy look like? Most educators think of it as giving students some choices in the classroom, but true autonomy is when students’ actions originate from within, and are owned by, them. It’s also when students’ interests, values, and goals are aligned with their behaviour, because they endorse the significance of these behaviours as relevant to their own internal goals. Does giving students more autonomy make a ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation Undoing the Common Core: Repeating the Cycle of Failure Are we, as a nation, not learning from the past? We seem to keep repeating the same mistakes time and again. Just as the U.S. implements the rigorous Common Core State Standards (CCSS)—and attempts to take a page from the book of other countries with world-class educational systems and stellar student results (such as Finland, China, etc.)—three states have suddenly from the Common Core. The U.S. can’t afford to abandon the Common Core, and we can’t afford to lose focus on what is important in ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation Innovation and the integration of technology in education Innovation is what we want to teach our students through the integration of technology in education, especially that we are an industrial school. Our students are studying curriculum theory in the classroom and then apply it in laboratories and workshops on machinery, which gives them greater opportunity for innovation. We are working to provide them with what is in the field of modern industrial technology and software that will help them through the integration of technology in education....
Change Management & Culture of Innovation WHAT DO TEACHERS DO THAT NO-ONE THINKS ABOUT? Here’s seven things teachers do that many people don’t ever think about… 1. We plan…a lot Teachers plan year round (yes, especially in the summer). With new curriculum, standards, and technology…there are always changes to be made when looking at the “big picture” of the school year. However, most of the planning comes during the school year when lessons, activities, and assessments have to be created…then modified…then tweaked…and then changed again to differentiate within the classroom. Many ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation STANDARDISED TESTING On reading the article from Michelle Rhee in “Opting Out of Standardized Tests? Wrong Answer” in The Washington Post, April 4, 2014 it made me think. “Tests are not fun – but they’re necessary. Stepping on the bathroom scale can be nerve-racking, but it tells us if that exercise routine is working. Going to the dentist for a check-up every six months might be unpleasant, but it lets us know if there are cavities to address. In education, tests provide an objective measurement of how students ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation WHAT TEACHING IS ALL ABOUT Nearly everyone has a story about the moment when a teacher changes the course of your life. A good teacher, after all, wields the authority of a parent with none of the psychological baggage. The best of them are semi-mysterious figures whose wisdom seems boundless and whose approval helps us discover who we are. Teaching isn’t about charismatic speeches or dramatic failures. It’s about managing classrooms full of kids at very different places intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically. ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation What Does Innovation Look Like? What does Innovation look like? I have 10 weeks to answer that question. I have been presented with the wonderful opportunity of creating a class and teaching it next school year. I am calling it the Innovation Class. The course is designed for the student who wishes to learn about innovation. Students will study the creative process, different types of innovation, how innovation is created, and how innovation can be transformed into commercial reality either as new products or new services....
Change Management & Culture of Innovation INNOVATIVE TEACHING CHALLENGE Look at your class. Think about what they have to offer the world! What small step can you take this week to get them connecting with students in other places? Maybe it is starting a class blog or twitter account. Maybe it is joining a global project or the Global Read Aloud. Maybe it is doing an old-fashioned pen-pal exchange (this time through email). Whatever it is, take the step…and watch how this type of interaction pushes your students forward. Let's hear what happened in your classroom....
Change Management & Culture of Innovation OUR CHILDREN IN A SMALLER WORLD The world just got a lot smaller. It shrunk when nations started sailing across the seas to faraway lands. It shrunk again when companies began to go international: manufacturing, buying, and selling products around the world. And it shrunk again when individuals were able to communicate and collaborate with one another through the internet. If you’ve read Thomas Friedman’s book, The World Is Flat, then you understand—we are living in a different time. Yet, many of us still teach as if the world ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation TECHNOLOGY PERSONALITIES IN A SCHOOL I joined a bunch of Communities where people congregate to ask questions and generously share resources. I just saw a recent post from Michael Parent to the Instructional Technology Integrators and Coaches community. He uploaded a great image where part of a pencil are used to describe the different personality types in a school: The Leaders, The Sharp Ones, The Wood, The Ferrules, The Erasers, The Hangers-On… have a look at the picture attached here What do you think of these and how do people ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation 4 Steps to Help Introduce a New Digital Curriculum How Do You Plan for Change when Implementing a New Digital Curriculum? Moving to a new digital curriculum requires intensive cooperation, communication, and knowledge sharing between school staff and administration. Having a flexible plan that can adapt to change is essential for any curriculum change, and when you add the element of new educational technology, the possibility for unforeseen obstacles is multiplied. Science has gone digital at in Salt Lake City, Utah. K-12 Science ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation PITFALLS TO AVOID WHEN A NEW LEADER So you have just received your first big promotion. Principal, Assistant Principal, Senior Teacher or Head of Department. You must be feeling great. Chances are you’re about to make one of these rookie mistakes: Saying how troubled the school or Department is that you’ve just taken over. That way, if your results are poor, it’s not your fault, because you inherited a dog. And if the results are good, you’ve been successful in the face of almost-impossible circumstances. People see through this....
Change Management & Culture of Innovation 7 Tips and Techniques to Encourage Education and Instructional Technology Innovation at Your Institution. In 2012, my attendance at the annual CIO Summit in Connecticut inspired this article in which I shared ideas that can enable administrators and educators to foster innovation in the use of instructional and education technologies in their schools. Today I share a shortened version of these tips and techniques, to inspire Partners in Learning readers to get out there and inspire innovation! Innovation often comes one step at a time from small changes: Many successful innovations are evolved by ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation Goodbye Win XP (Like a Candle in the Wind) Goodbye Win XP (Like a Candle in the Wind) Goodbye Win XP / Though I always knew you more than all / You had the interface to run so well / While those before you crawled / They just tried and didn’t work / You required a 233MHz brain / ME just had to get killed / So you could save the day Chorus: And it seems to me you lived your life / Like a tower in the wind / Always knowing where to Bing to / When the search came in / I was there when you were beta / But I was just a kid / Your OS ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation Most important factor for Change management? what is that one factor that needs to be a priority for Innovation and Change management, is it teacher training, learning environment or accountability?...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation Pourquoi innover ? Bonjour à toutes et à tous j'arrive sur ce blog (excusez mon anglais défaillant) et souhaite apporter une très modeste contribution. J'ai désiré innover en montrant que les élèves étaient capables d'être très créatifs lorsque on leur en laissait l'occasion. J'ai donc créé un concours de robots dans lequel les élèves doivent travailler en équipe (ce qui est nouveau pour eux en France), trouver des solutions techniques par eux-même, et enfin présenter leur robot lors d'un concours final (qui n'est ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation INNOVATIVE SCHOOLS DO MAKE MISTAKES If innovation is doing things differently but better what is it that differentiates innovative schools from the average school? Innovative schools can make a mistake and learn from it, imagine what type of message that sends to the teachers and students. Innovative schools continually push the envelope of teaching and learning, and sometimes this leads to mistakes. Mistakes with technology, mistakes with curriculum, and mistakes with training. But, that doesn’t hold innovative schools back from ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation COMMANDMENTS OF INNOVATIVE TEACHING 10 Commandments of Innovative Teaching As a new teacher I remember getting into my classroom for the first time. I set up the space like classrooms I had seen before and enjoyed; I got my lesson plans in order; packed the filing cabinets with resources; started to make copies of overhead slides; put together an area for reading and stacked the shelves with books I had picked up in college or from my parents house. Then the students arrived, and all my plans went out the window. I realized very ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation CLASSROOM OF THE FUTURE Earlier this year, futurist Neil Selwyn shared his ideas on what changes we might see in education as technology continues to develop. Some of the ideas were pretty out there, like the idea that we could have additional memory installed in our brains. "People are also talking about a hard drive you would attach externally on your head to download information into for enhancing memory capacity." But most of his predictions are what you would expect, and some are already in development. Teaching ...
Change Management & Culture of Innovation CHANGING A SCHOOLS CULTURE Changing an organization’s culture is one of the most difficult leadership challenges. That’s because an organization’s culture comprises an interlocking set of goals, roles, processes, values, communications practices, attitudes and assumptions. The elements fit together as a mutually reinforcing system and combine to prevent any attempt to change it. That’s why single-fix changes, such as the introduction of teams, or Lean, or Agile, or Scrum, or knowledge management, or some new process, may ...
