Glimpse to My Innovation Plan (March 2021)

My Innovation Project

The Beginning

Since the beginning my Innovation Project has focused on one simple goal: Create Critical Thinkers. Sir Ken Robinson said in one of his talks that our world is lacking of critical thinkers. There is a scarcity of critical thinkers (2010). This has been the keystone for my innovation plan. It is not only the keystone for my plan, but it is currently for my teaching. That is why, this whole process that I started in March of 2019 became an amazing opportunity to give structure and form all my ideas that had been wandering around in my mind.

To place my plan into action, two areas need to be addressed:

  1. Work with students and use creativity apps and computational thinking as driving tools to create, foster and develop critical thinkers. The way this works is based on how computational thinking helps the mind to analyze a problem, identify the source of the problem to provide a solution, try the solution, implement the solution and repeat in case of failure. In case of success, ponder how the solution can be improved. At the same time, invite teachers in my campus to participate in this journey. In other words, provide a solution to a problem in a series of steps. (Sharin and Warschauer, 2012)
  2. The second area in my action plan to make my idea work is to extend this plan into my campus. The main idea of this plan is that it has to grow by itself without me. Therefore, to achieve this, more teachers need to be involved. In a simple way, the second area needed is teachers.
Teachers working on the origins of our own Innovation Plan. June 2019.  

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I want to think that my innovation plan is simple:

  1. Use technology to create critical thinkers,
  2. grow teachers to be part of the whole idea,
  3. Passion for life, teaching and growing. Not only the teachers themselves, but more importantly students.

I believe that just these three elements are needed to succeed. Having these three ingredients is a recipe for achieving the goal, and where the only limitations will be our own minds.

The Process

After I started to research and understand several theories and authors, I started to realize that my Innovation Plan was a living and breathing organism. The ideas and thoughts I had at the beginning of this project started to evolve while my own self also started to grow. Through this process, I had been exposed not only to different literature, research and data, but also to a lot of different situations, people and reality. On one side, I was able to do research about my ideas and who else is doing the same. On another side, I have been faced with reality and how things can be done or cannot be done. Also, I have had the opportunity to meet and build a strong network with people like me.

All of this is just a small glimpse to explain why my Innovation Plan has changed. But it has changed in the shape and form. It has changed on how and when to implement, but its core, its true colors has kept intact.

To exemplify this, I can share that at the beginning my main technology focus was to use a specific device, but due to different factors this became quite difficult to do. Therefore, I needed to adapt. After this first change, I realized that my eyes were bigger than my stomach. I became aware that in order to run, I need to do baby steps, just like Dr. Thibodeaux kept telling me. At the same time, I learned a lot from researching and understanding different theories. The same happened when collecting data and truly comprehend the process to follow if I truly want to produce a change into my organization.

These situations helped me to broaden my horizons. They helped me to analyze and understand what is needed to be done so my plan can be successful. They had facilitated my process to assimilate what is going on around me and what path to keep following, but always with the goal of creating critical thinkers by using technology and now more specific, using robotics.

The whole process has been a cruise for me. I have had my ups and downs, but it has been a great opportunity for me to learn that when a door doesn’t open, there are many more waiting to be open.

Where I am now.

After all the learning and experiences, I have had the moment where my plan is going has changed a little bit. Life happened and COVID happened as well. On my original plan to involve teachers, I the intention is to become a facilitator for my campus teachers. This was present to be a little but harder than expected, special with COVID, but then something came along. In around January 2020, I got invited to apply to this amazing project where Amazon is pursuing to reach as many schools as possible to teach student Computer Science (CS). I applied and I got accepted. Amazon´s project is called Amazon Future Engineer project in cooperation with  Project STEM, who is going to implement the program an work with the schools. Project STEM will train and coach teachers and provide all curriculum needed. I find this juxtaposition beneficial, because Project STEM can focus on training our teachers and I can focus on becoming more of a coach and a supporter for teachers and students for their needs and be a resource for them. Project STEM will be doing guiding us teachers through the curriculum, while I can become a tool to help where needed.

This is what is going so far in one area. Also, I’ve been fostering coding skills with my classroom students. My students had worked with Scratch online-block-coding app, Sphero EDU Bolts bots and all month of March 2021, they had been part of a state-wide-competition with Coderz, and when this piece was written, the two teams my students had, one team was in 9th place and the second team in 14th place. It has been a delightful experience to watch how my students are supporting each other and trying to figure out different solutions. As well, this applies to my students´ level of engagement and participation. They want to keep working on the competition, even though they struggle. This has been a total shift in their mindset. From rejecting to do challenging things, to keep trying and figuring out a solution.

As for where I stand in my innovation plan right now, I believe that I am in the right track. I had faced with challenges and a lot of reality. I had learned that things in my mind are different when bringing them to reality. That is why my plan has been pivoting and refocusing in a constant way. With every win and non-win, I had been able to learn from them and adapt. This way, I can analyze where I am and where I am going. At the same time, it has been helping me to analyze and understand to readapt my expectations and come with solutions to a variety of challenges. So far, I am happy where I am with my plan, but there is still some work to do.

Self-assessment

This plan has brought me delight and joy. It has helped me to better understand my environment. During the program, I had been able expose to a vast amount of knowledge, researchers, authors, professors, and life. I had learned that how things are in one’s mind, might be slightly different to how others see them. My whole process has been a constant growth, adapt, learn, and try again. Due to different circumstances (COVID included), my plan has not been fully implemented. By this, I mean that it has not left my classroom’s borders. I want my plan to survive me and be self-sustained. I had not been able to export it to other classrooms, and less to say to other schools.

COVID has been no friend to no one, and it is my hope, that for Fall of 2021 I can start reaching out teachers to participate in the Amazon project and start with the tiny snowball. Then, the game is on and the pieces will fall by themselves into their own place, at least this is my projection. This way, this Innovation plan can be fully implemented as I planned to.

My process in a Glimpse.

 I had shared that I have learned a lot. I had learned different theories, what others had done, where I am in comparison with other researchers, how to analyze data and implement it. I had practice digital learning and creating different ideas to embed computational thinking into my students in order to create critical thinkers.

Also, I have learned that some things work and others not and there is always a lot of space to grow and learn from the no-wins. Previously I talked about some challenges. One big challenge I have focus is that most of the times, classroom teachers are so overwhelmed with so many things that many times they do not want to participate in “something else”. This has been one of the biggest challenges (among two or three more). If teachers do not want to engage, it will be difficult that I can export my plan outside my classroom. So, I had been developing different skills to be able to captivate my audience and make them part of it. I am learning and working on reaching out to teachers that want to participate. Those are the teachers I need and want, because if I do this with unwilling teachers, things will not succeed.

Besides learning on how to scout for teachers, one more thing that my process had left me, is to focus more on the kids and be a better facilitator. Students want to do it, and when my structured and planning has increased, my students’ engagement has increased too. Therefore, I can happily say that the more I learn the more it reflects into my students’ success, ergo, they become critical thinkers!

Spreading the word

Part of the challenges I had encountered is how to spread the word. COVID happened and it became overwhelming how technology suddenly invaded every teacher in the world (literally). As it could be seen in the news, thousands of teachers had to change their mindset of “I don´t need technology” to: “I need to learn a computer and do virtual classes and everything in less than a month.” Therefore, I held my horses and decided to wait until things settle down. Things are settling down now and I already have one teacher that wants to participate. I am in the right track, so, when Amazon’s project is ready to kick off, I will as my principal to make an announcement and spread the word, hopefully more teachers would like to participate in this amazing opportunity of creating critical thinkers by learning Computer Science! 

Next Innovation Plan.

Even though I am a person that constantly is planning for the “what’s next now?”, I am still in the brainstorming process for what would be my next innovation plan. The conclusion that I had come to is that I think I will have my current plan as the spine and then create sub-projects that derive from this one. As for how would I apply this? Well, I will continue to adjust and modify until success is obtained. I will use all the skills and lessons learned during this process and I feel confident that things will run smoothly now that I have acquired some experience.

Conclusion

There is not much to conclude. What I can say is that I had learned a lot. I had learned theory and real-life practice. I had been able to make a lot of mistakes and learn from there. As well, I have a better understanding how my surrounding environment works and had come to this conclusion:

“As long as my efforts had reached one single student, then I can feel that I’ve done my job.”

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