prime the pumps
Let's talk about some important concepts in order to "prime our creativity pumps" for this amazing project. :)
so What is innovation?
It is not something mystical and out-of-this-worldly difficult to achieve. Let's be straight to the point.
creativity + implementation = innovation
INNOVATION = PERCEIVED VALUE
In order to innovate, we need to implement plans and actions that are born of our creativity.
what is creativity?
Creativity is seeing and creating new combinations or recombinations of existing things.
Creativity is bringing things that exist in other places to places where they don exist (yet).
Creativity is connecting the dots in new and different ways.
Creativity is bringing old ideas to new products, people, and places.
how can i be more creative?
Creativity may be intimidating. But one thing is certain: everyone is creative. Creativity is a human trait, and it can be stimulated and developed.
One great way of becoming more creative is to live in the intersections. Steve Jobs said:
"I like living at the intersection of the humanities and technology."
According to IDEO's Diego Rodriguez, we need to set ourselves up to be more creative by living at the intersections. To live at the intersection is to to stay curious and hungry about the world. It means reading different magazines about different areas, connecting to people who are from different industries, watching different movies of different genres, TED talks, videos.
It means getting inspiration from a diversity of sources and people and experiences. Diego Rodriguez says that great designers are great readers. Great designers are excellent at pattern recognition. Great designers have the skill of synthetic connection, which is to get inspiration and perspectives from elsewhere and to come up with a product or service design which is innovative.
let's play with intersections, shall we?
We English teachers are a diverse people. Some of us have the traditional Letras background, but some (most?) of us have very different academic backgrounds. Not to mention our personal interests, our hobbies, our art.
Think about your work as an English teacher. Now think about your academic background, for example, I would think about my work as an Anthropologist. How might these two areas intersect? Or think about your love of cooking or music. How might those experiences intersect with the learning experiences we design for our English students?
the kinds of innovation
Here are the three kinds of innovation as described in the document called INOVA ESCOLA put together by LABi (Laboratório de Inovação Educacional).
Our project aims at promoting and multiplying substantial and incremental innovations. Who knows, we may even get to make a radical innovation! The point is: let us not be intimidated by the apparent magnitude of the term 'radical'. Notice how the definition of incremental follows the lines of what creativity is: a (re)combination of things that are not necessarily new, but that have never been combined in that way.
Below are the areas that have been identified as being the major areas in which schools have been implementing successful innovations in Brazil and around the world, according to the study INOVA ESCOLA by LABi. Let's have a look at them:
Inspired by these six areas for innovation, we may focus on those that are pertinent to our project goal of promoting innovative and impactful learning experiences for our students. Personalization + technological resources, the role of the teacher, and differentiated learning spaces are the three that jump right off the page.
a mental provisioning for the project
Some words of caution about the role of technology in innovation
We want to go beyond regarding innovation as just a function of the adoption of technology in the classroom. Innovation is much more than just using Ipads and cool apps with our students. It is a way of rethinking and redesigning the learning experience as a whole; the nature of interactions, spatial arrangements, the role of the teacher in the process of cultivating student agency in their learning journeys and many more. Let us go beyond the technological, let us look at the human experience of learning that we are facilitating in our classrooms.
TECHNOLOGY is NOT INNOVATION.
TECHNOLOGY is a TOOL for INNOVATION.
(A powerful one, but a tool nonetheless.)