Wednesday, March 1, 2017

The Innovator's Mindset: ECVHS PD Book Club, Discussion 1 Notes #IMMOOC

Thanks to Amber, Sheilah, and Steve for your participation in a great book club conversation this morning in the library! Just as a quick summary of the talking points of our discussion:

  • Our use of technology leaves a lot of room for innovation. We frequently use our Chromebooks as expensive pencils.
  • Being a creative educator is challenging, given the system we are operating in. We could be experimental, but at the end of the day we still divide classes into periods, we still have to issue grades, we still have nearly 40 students in our classes. Factors like these make innovating difficult.
  • Perhaps our school system (district, state, country) is not build with learning as the focus. That is, perhaps out education system isn't designed for learning and for learners. If it were, it would look different. We would collaborate with other teachers differently. We would have a different number of students. We would give students feedback differently.
I hope to see more ECVHS PD Book Club members at our next meeting on 3/29 in the library (calendar invite coming soon).


Also, George Couros is having another Innovator's Mindset MOOC, which started on Monday, February 27th. You can view the conversation here, as well as a few guiding questions. We used some of those questions to drive our fantastic conversation this morning.