Creating a Culture of Innovation

1. Creating a Culture of Innovation

2. Culture of Innovation • Freedom for anyone (adults and students) to bring forth new approaches to improving learning • Leadership that supports administrators, teachers, and students by not only allowing them but encouraging them to take risks to find new approaches to existing problems. Leadership’s sole question for any new idea is “Does this approach align with our goals, objectives and student outcomes and does it have the potential to improve our likelihood of meeting our goals, objectives and student outcomes?”. • Superintendents and school boards believe and embrace these risk taking approaches that empower all involved to make a difference in the learning environment.

3. Culture of Innovation • They don’t see technology as a crutch for actually having an innovative culture. If all you see in classrooms is kids using their 1:1 device to do the same assignments in the same ways as they did them before, not much has changed. • An ability to abandon initiatives that aren’t working to pursue these new ideas. While true transformative strategies may cost money, they don’t necessarily mean new money. A learning environment with a culture of innovation is continuously asking itself what it can stop doing in order to improve the learning of our kids.

4. Defining “Innovation” • “Just Say NO”. • If we must define it then “innovation” is a new approach to an existing problem” • Truth is, innovation cannot be universally defined because what is a new approach in one education setting would not be in another. • Don’t do innovation for innovation sake!

5. What can KDE do? • When you have an idea, ask yourself what policies, regulations and laws prevent us from doing this? • Ask for waivers if necessary. • Be reminded that for many things there aren’t KDE police. • Can you eventually show results?