Book Review: The Innovator’s Mindset

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my reading of The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros became a “wicked slow read.” I don’t normally do “slow reads,” particularly with books about education. I zip. I devour. I readreadread. I write.

But since George was co-hosting the Innovator’s Mindset MOOC last fall (think of the IMOOC like a large book study, with the author co-leading discussions), I figured I would take my time with his book, which is fashioned for an audience of mostly school administrators (which I am not) on the theme of expanding notions of how to “innovate” schools for today’s students. “Taking my time” became nearly three months of reading one book.

The IMMOOC ended more than a few weeks ago (actually, the end took me by surprise .. I’m not sure why .. did I expect the MOOC to keep going? I blinked, and it was over) and it was some time before I now finished the book, on my Kindle app, and even more time to post this review (it was in my draft bin for a stretch).

My take?

I’m still juggling the jargon in the book and discussions. Words like “innovation” and “mindset” make my eyes go blurry. That said, George and IMOOOC co-facilitator Katie Martin tried to bring many people into the conversation about what it means to innovate our school system. That was helpful, even if some still slipped into edu-talk.

What is innovati0n? George defines it as “a way of thinking that creates something new and better” (which is still a bit too broad for my brain but I don’t have anything better to offer in replacement) and he wisely reminds readers that technology, while perhaps useful, is not a defining factor in innovative thinking.

The Innovator’s Mindset book itself provides a solid number of stories of schools, administrators and teachers pushing against the constraints of our school system constraints, and George writes in a very positive, upbeat manner — giving readers the push they need to take chances on ideas and, in an important stance, to support teachers in the classrooms to try ideas to meet the needs of their students.

I appreciated how George taps into Sylvia Duckworth’s visual notes as a complement to his text — she really does an outstanding job visualizing ideas — and George’s move to make lists and bullet points will no doubt be helpful for harried school administrators. George weaves his own stories as an educator-turned-administrator into narratives of how change can happen, and how sometimes change doesn’t quite happen. That doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying.

If nothing else, the book reminds us of the drawbacks of being isolated — as a teacher or as an administrator — and not being supported by those with the means to make things happen. I refer to superintendents, curriculum coordinators and principals. Again and again, George tells his readers to find ways to make things happen, even on small scale. Celebrate each step. Reflect. Keep pushing forward.

Innovation doesn’t emerge suddenly — it’s a gradual shift forward, spurred and powered by a shared vision of how things might be. The Innovator’s Mindset book, and the accompanying IMMOOC that took place last fall, is another compass on the journey. It’s a read worth your time, particularly if you are a school administrator. Speaking as a teacher, I hope you dive in.

Peace (pages of it),
Kevin

Slice of Life: #IMMOOC Quotes of Note

(This is for Slice of Life, a weekly writing activity hosted by Two Writing Teachers. You write, too.)

path of idea

We’re somewhere in the middle of the Innovator’s Mindset MOOC, but I am not sure where things are because I keep forgetting to pay attention to what chapter I am on. I am pretty sure I have read ahead in George Couros’ book — The Innovator’s Mindset. I don’t think it matters. It’s a MOOC, after all.

From Innovator's Mindset

Yesterday, I followed a digital path from the Kindle app on iPad (where I am reading The Innovator’s Mindset book) … to the Amazon Kindle website where my highlighted annotations are housed on the Web … to the Pablo visual quote-making site so that I could “visualize” some of the highlights … to Flickr to host the quote images and then … back here to share the quotes. I’ll be hitting the “share” button one more time, pushing the post into my social media networks with a mouse-click.

From Innovator's MindsetThat’s quite a path across platforms just to share a few words I didn’t even write, and yet, it did seem rather seamless. It’s true that while one BIG APP would be helpful for accomplishing all that (read-highlight-quote-share), we adapt to what is available to us and use it as we need. And I have been walking this path of sharing from one platform to another for some time.

From Innovator's Mindset

The quotes sprinkled here in this post center on ideas that I want to hold on to, as best as I can. And if you look closely at the quotes I am sharing, you will see the message in them (exploration, reflection, possibilities) dovetails quite nicely with the message I am writing here for Slice of Life.

From Innovator's Mindset

Peace (make it work for you),
Kevin

#IMMOOC Found Poem: Begin with Exploration

I wandered around blogs this morning, gathering up words from various folks in the Innovator’s Mindset community. This poem — Begin with Exploration —  is the result of my wanderings … Thank you to bloggers who are sharing …. I used Google Docs to write, and then Notegraphy to create, Soundcloud to podcast, and then ThingLink to annotate, so that the passages in the poem might connect back to the original blog posts,

Peace (between the lines),
Kevin

Humble Ideas for Innovating the #IMMOOC Experience

Nodes and Clusters in IMMOOC

I am appreciating elements of the Innovator’s Mindset MOOC (IMMOOC) just fine.I’m mid-way through the book. I’ve read a lot of blog posts, added comments to spark my own thinking, and tried my hand at some various collaborative efforts.  Some of those collaborations have drawn some interest; Others, not so much.

It’s interesting. Given that our whole topic is “innovation,” I remain hopeful that the MOOC itself would begin to shift into more innovative practices. This is no knock to George Couros or Katie Martin, but sheer numbers alone don’t make innovation. Still, they did post this question for the coming week:

Our goal through this process was to really tap into how we can “empower” you through this process, not simply engage. What are your thoughts on this? Would love to hear what you think.

How we participants engage in the IMMOOC … that’s the key. Just as one central message among blog posts and weekly Hangouts is that teachers need to be innovative in order to help students become innovative, MOOCs have to be innovative if they want educators to become innovative so their students become innovative. If I add another layer — school administrators  (and there are lots of them in the IMMOOC) — into that mix, the loop might leap right off the page.

In hopes of sparking some possibilities, then, I offer up some suggestions for moving the IMMOOC towards more a potentially innovative experience.

  • I have appreciated the weekend Hangout Sessions, particularly later on as I listen and annotate in Vialogues, but it has felt a bit like we’re replicating the old model of teachers (George and Katie) talking to a room of students (us). They talk (with guests they line up and with include questions from the community) and we listen. What about if they openly invited about six to eight IMMOOC participants into the Hangout, and let those folks talk.  Put out an open Google Doc. Let folks invite themselves to be guests. Maybe crowdsource themes. Discuss. Look to Teachers Teaching Teachers as a model. Or the Make with Me sessions in Connected Learning MOOC (which I was part of). Allow participants to be the center and the voice of the experience.
  • What about if Writer George and Publisher Dave put an entire chapter of his book, Innovator’s Mindset, online, and we were all invited to annotate it, using Hypothesis. A rich conversation could unfold in the margins, as we celebrated and pushed back on ideas around innovation. The conversation could drift from George to the community (with George and Katie in the margins, too … wouldn’t it be neat to ask George questions about lines and passages in the text, with the text as the text and the author as participant?).
  • How about if we created short interactives using the site Answer Garden. We could feature two interactive word gardens with two opposite questions: “Innovation looks like …” and “Innovation does NOT look like …” and our responses would be pulled together into one visual Word Cloud experience? It would draw us together.
  • Could we create a Padlet where folks could share their best practices in innovation? I know many are doing this on their blogs (which can be hard to find) and on Twitter (where sharing comes and goes). We could collaboratively create one central resource, built over time, would be valuable to all of us, and into the future. It could live on beyond the IMMOOC. People could just share links to blog posts, so the work involved would not be too much. It would be a gift from us to us to others.
  • Is there any way to consider an innovative culminating event for the IMMOOC? (Note: George and Katie may already have this in mind.) Could we collaboratively write a shared post about the experience, with a nod to where we all go from here and how we help others along the way? (It could start in Google Docs and flow to a blog post at the main site).

Again, this is not criticism for what has been happening so far. Obviously, people are engaged. Some people are writing their first blog post ever. Others are trying new things. George and Katie probably have their hands full. This would not have to fall on them to do.

Real MOOCs don’t rely on the facilitators. Real MOOCs rely on the participants. WE could all do it. YOU could do some of it. It would be a SHARED adventure.

It seems to me that the theme of “innovative practice” should be represented in a learning space that calls itself the Innovator’s Mindset. Let’s harness the digital tools for collaboration so that we all learn and move ahead together.

Peace (in all spaces),
Kevin

 

#IMMOOC Blog Tour (Here and There)

Nodes and Clusters in IMMOOC

I did a little #IMMOOC (Innovator’s Mindset MOOC) blog tour the other day, mostly through links shared via Twitter, since there are just too many blogs to get settled into my RSS feed. I spent part of my morning, just following links and reading and leaving comments, and grabbing ideas.

My aim was to be inspired by some of the writing and to think more deeply about what fellow IMMOOCers were sharing. I took what I thought was a central piece of their blog posts and layered it a visual (via Pablo site). You can click on the images to go to the original blog post. I encourage you to do that. Leave them a comment. Interact. Engage. Push back. 

Here we go ..

IMMOOC Blog Tour: AngelaAngela’s observation about the power of curiosity hits home with me, and I am always wondering if I do enough to set the grounds for student-led curiosity, as opposed to teacher-led instruction. Finding the middle ground there seems to be a key. And remaining curious as a teacher? Critical.

IMMOOC Blog Tour: KatieKatie reminds us that if we see ourselves, teachers, as experts on everything, we’ve got the wrong thinking going on. Sure, we probably do know a lot about a lot of things, and our students expect that. But our students, and outside resources, can be valuable, too. Turning to students for insights and help and ideas is empowering for them. But it takes a certain confidence for a teacher to be able to do this.

Her central question, coming from her role as a professional development facilitator, always lingers in my head before, during and after facilitating professional development: Would I want to be a participant in my own professional development sessions? And the other: Would I want to be a student in my own classroom? — that’s just as critical.

IMMOOC Blog Tour: SimonSimon brings up mindset theory – as George does right in the title of the book underlying this MOOC experience. I am still struggling with the concept of “mindset.” I understand the underlying elements (and just read a whole piece in Time Magazine about mindset learning in schools, which helped) but I get caught up in how jargon-y it all sounds. Is it too squishy for me? I’m not sure. I need to keep an open mind here. Change my mindset? Maybe.

IMMOOC Blog Tour: RoRo’s sense of possibilities from professional sharing rang true with me. It’s both the idea of “walk away with something for tomorrow” and/or “that may need to simmer a year or two” — both take-aways prove the mettle of a PD session. If I don’t have either of those in my head, the PD was a dud. If I have both? Success.

IMMOOC Blog Tour: MelissaMelissa’s point about collaboration and how that skill is crucial to the world beyond school is spot on. It’s not on the test — but collaboration with others, of different backgrounds and different skill sets and different ideas, is the foundation for life. Where else can we best introduce and model is but in our classroom?

IMMOOC Blog Tour: JillJill’s insights about “right time/right moment” resonates with me, although I worry about missing that time and moment. I wish there were more times when everything clicked and it all came together in perfect symmetry — my teaching skills and my student’s learning needs. It does happen. That’s the magic of teaching.

IMMOOC Blog Tour: AmyAmy brought me insight into the administrator’s view. Which is good. The most powerful takeaway from the IMOOOC for me so far is the interaction with school principals, superintendents and other administrators who are working to make a difference in their schools. Learning about their learning, and their dramatic and modest attempts at change, is helpful for me, a classroom teacher.

IMMOOC Blog Tour: AaronAaron reminds us that seeing the big picture, as well as the smaller pictures that make up that big picture, is a critical move for any leader of a school. Change can feel overwhelming, and speaking as a classroom teacher, if it is clear that an administrator is overwhelmed, we teachers go: Uh Oh.

Thank you to all the bloggers, writing and sharing. I appreciate it.

Peace (venture out in the world and look),
Kevin

 

#IMMOOC Collaboration Invitation: Annotation

Nodes and Clusters in IMMOOC

If you missed last weekend’s second #IMMOOC (Innovator’s Mindset MOOC) hangout, I have it sitting in Vialogues (a collaborative video annotation tool), just waiting for your insights and reactions. Seriously. You’re invited to comment as you watch the hangout session.

Come hangout after the hangout

immooc Hangout2

And I’m still hoping to get more people on the IMMOOC Map to fully represent the IMMOOC. The numbers show nearly 2,000 participants (I think I saw that number in the Tweet stream) and wouldn’t it be cool to see all of us on this map, together? Right now, we cluster on North America, but I think we have a larger representation of the world than the map shows right now.

 

Pin yourself on the map

IMMOOC MapPeace (together),
Kevin

#DigiLitSunday #IMMOOC: Using Voice for Revising Writing

Sound Stories under construction

“Read the sentence out loud. Speak it to your dog or cat. Or find a corner and read it to yourself. Your ear will hear if something is not quite right. Your eyes might miss it.”

That was me, talking to my sixth grade students about some writing last week, during a vocabulary lesson. The lesson has to do with different forms of words in context of a piece of writing and many students struggle with this task because they can’t “hear” the sentence as they “read” the sentence.  They only insert the root form, not past/present/future versions. I keep urging them to get the words into the air — their ears will help.

This coming November/December, I aim to do Sound Stories with my sixth graders again. It was so successful last year, during Digital Writing Month, as it allowed me to teach the interconnections of writing, voice, sound and media editing, as well as publishing. We don’t do enough with voice in the classroom.

This week, for #DigiLitSunday and as part of thinking of innovative teaching practice for the #IMMOOC (Innovator’s Mindset), I am exploring the notion of “audio voice” for revision because I think having students use their own voice recordings in order to revise their written draft work may be a powerful tool for them to use as young writers. Just to make clear: there is another concept we call “voice” when it comes to writing – that of the writer’s voice and tone as surfaced in the writing through vocabulary choice and other techniques — but I am thinking very literal here.

I’ve been kicking this idea of voice for revision around for years, thanks to some work done long ago by a Western Mass Writing Project colleague, who used little voice recorders to help her students revise their writing. I always thought she was onto something interesting and powerful.

Which is not to say we don’t tap into the audio for writing in my classroom …

I’ve introduced Voice Typing with my students (via Google Docs) and we’ve done some podcasting throughout the year. We’ve had students use Dragon Naturally Speaking so that they dictate and it types for them when they are struggling writers. And the Sound Stories  project– where students have to use Garageband and list of sound effects to write and record a story — has been another way for voice to come into the mix.

But I haven’t yet fully explored how a student writer, during the editing process itself, records themselves reading the rough draft text, and then uses that audio of their own reading to deeply analyze the text itself on a second read. They are their first reader. This seems obvious, but it is not. Many students don’t read through, with close reading eyes, their own writing.

Some guiding questions I see surfacing from this audio-revision concept:

  • Where does the audio reading veer from the text reading because you (writer/reader) automatically made it better in the moment of the live read?
  • What sounds “wrong” to the ear on second listen and how can you fix it?
  • What do we notice about our writing when the text becomes audio?
  • How does your physical voice play a role in what you read?
  • Where in the text can we now revise to make it better and clearer and smoother for the reader?

There’s so much learning, and teaching, swirling around in those questions.

The problem, as always, is time to do it, but I need to make time if I think this might improve the editing and proofreading skills of my students, right? I need to give them as many strategies for improving their ideas and writing. They need an entire toolbox. Their voice might be another tool in that box. (We won’t get into the discomfort many have about hearing their voice .. but it is something that will come up in the classroom setting.)

Certainly, there is no shortage of ways to record voice. Audacity. Garageband. Vocaroo. Soundcloud. There are tons of apps and programs for recording voice. What I want is simplicity — the fewest bells and whistles possible, so that students focus only the sound of their own voice and the words on the page, where the two converge and where the two diverge.

I am inspired by the work of Dawn Reed, who has been writing about the use of podcasting and This I Believe audio essays in her high school classroom for some time. At the National Writing Project Digital Is site, Dawn shared out this observation that connects with my thinking on this issue. Here, Dawn writes of the moment when one of her students made this connection between his voice and the writing on the page, and how one can influence the other:

When we started this podcasting project, however, Jonathan told me he was amazed by how the recording of his speech made an impact on the way he viewed his voice. He also told me that he had never read his work aloud before, and he was impressed with the role it had on his revision. Without the step of the actual recording of his voice, Jonathan skipped the reading aloud of his work. It wasn’t until he needed to record that he saw the value in reading his work aloud, and he additionally listened to his voice, which gave him insight on his writing and revision strategies. In this way, digital literacies have become a revision tool for Jonathan. It was when he heard his voice being played in the recording that he noticed himself not sounding real or genuine and that’s when he went back to revise the piece in the print and spoken text in order to have his writing and speaking show his voice. Through this process, Jonathan affirmed the role of his unique voice in his print and spoken essay. — from Digital Is, via Dawn Reed

That’s what I want from my students, too.

Peace (it sounds like peace),
Kevin

 

Songs of Human Voice: From Cacophony to Composition

I was creating a Storify of all of the short video reflections that folks are making for the IMMOOC (Innovator’s Mindset), grabbing them and tucking them into the curated project. (see it here) But when I was tinkering with the template of the Storify, and tried to use the slideshow template, suddenly, my speakers were filled with all of the voices, talking all at once.

At first, I panicked — too loud! too loud! — and turned the volume off. After some reflection and a spark of curiosity, though, I turned it back on and  … I listened. I listened to the swirling sounds of all of our voices. I could hear different textures of sounds. I could hear individual words and phrases lifting up from the chaos, every now and then. Clusters of noise came together and then apart, weaving this noisy tapestry.

And I realized — this is a song of human voice and experience and questions. This is the collective songs of educators, deep in inquiry. This is music.

Which got me thinking: could I record all of those voices together (yes, I could) and then add a looping music track underneath it all, guiding the sounds into some sense of song? I could. What made it all work, in fact, is that towards the end, voices begin ending, slowly, like an audio tail wagging, and we are left with one lone voice, and her daughter, telling the entire IMMOOC community to “have a great day,” and that voice of that young daughter of Sheila Vick (@sheila_vick) was the magic sauce that made it all work.

Listen in headphones, if you can, and tell me this is not beautiful in its own way. It is longer than I would have liked, but I could not force myself to cut out anyone’s voice. (And some videos were added to the Storify later that did not make it into my audio recording. Sorry.)

Peace (sounds like …),
Kevin

PS — this is how I did it:

  • Launched Audacity recording software
  • Placed microphone by speakers
  • Started the Storify
  • Downloaded audio file as MP3
  • Launched Soundtrap website
  • Uploaded audio
  • Used loops to create underlying music
  • Downloaded and then uploaded to Soundcloud
  • Shared in social media

Middleweb Review: The World Peace Game

The most innovative idea that I came across this summer? How about John Hunter’s World Peace Game concept? The game is incredible and complicated and pushes all sorts of learning in all sorts of directions.

Hunter’s story of how he developed this intensive game that upped the ante for his fourth graders (and other assorted age groups as he brings the game elsewhere … including the Pentagon, where military leaders played it, too) as he asks players to help solve problems facing the world. His story is certainly worth a look, if only for discovering another way to re-examine our classroom spaces as something beyond testing and mandates.

Read my review at Middleweb of World Peace and Other Fourth Grade Achievements by John Hunter.

Peace (not just a game),
Kevin