“Innovation” is the big buzz word in education, and rightfully so.  People are looking at doing things “different and better”, and we should be exploring different practices to help focus on “what is best for kids”.  One of these practices that many people have explored is Google’s “20% time”, although that program has recently been ended.

Even “innovative practices” can become stagnant and sometimes only serve a short term purpose, but there are multiple roads to how you can be innovative.  Jamie Notter explores this in his most recent blog post:

Folks, were you really implementing 20% time just because Google was doing it? Or because you read about it on a blog, or heard about it in a speech? Why on earth would you copy something that someone else is doing without understanding why that practice makes sense to you and your organization?! And while I’m on the subject, can I please throw that question in front of you as you debate whether or not to become more like Steve Jobs and Apple and have everything tightly controlled by a single visionary (those articles bug me too)? See my post the other week about the evil of best practices. Google was decentralized in its innovation, and now it is apparently centralizing it a bit. Does that mean Jobs was right? No. It just means innovation is important, there isn’t one single path, and it’s up to you to figure out how to do it.

So here are some questions for you that you can either blog about, or respond to in the comments section.

How do you go about creating innovative practices in your schools? 

How do you know if they are making a difference?

How are they revisited to ensure that they have the same impact that they once had before?

Just some ideas of things that I wanted to throw your way this week.  Hope everyone is having a great month of September!

George Couros