With the many new and diverse educational technology tools available for teaching and learning, it is an exciting time to foster innovation in our classrooms. Innovation is related to the creation of novel ideas that have significant social impacts and involves essential skills that all students should master, such as technology?variant=sf116038″ target=”_blank” data-url=”https://www.ascd.org/books/teaching-the-4cs-with-technology?variant=sf116038″>4C of critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration.
As we prepare students for careers that don't yet exist, creating innovative learning environments will give them the space to develop their creative capabilities. Many ways in which we, as teachers, can approach fostering innovation are available in teaching and learning spaces. Here are four practical and workable ideas to get you started.
1. Encourage innovation in the classroom: cultivate entrepreneurial mindsets
Our mindset impacts the way we think and act. And while successful entrepreneurs have different businesses and goals, they typically have similar mindsets in terms of thinking outside the box, trying new and different ways of approaching problem solving, and being relentless in working to make their dreams come true.
We want our students to think this way too, and to do so, it's important to cultivate that entrepreneurial mindset while nurturing their creative spirits and encouraging them to innovate while they learn. This means designing learning activities that ask them to solve problems, question existing approaches and create different ways of doing things.
2. Focus on digital fluency
technology has made innovation possible in ways that were not even imaginable before. We are already using generative. Use of ai in the classroom with many more news every day.
Many of our classroom learning activities focus on helping students develop their digital literacy skills, which is great for increasing their understanding of what digital tools are and how to use them. However, in classrooms that foster innovation, we must move from digital literacy to focusing on digital fluency, which is necessary to develop students' ability to use digital tools to create what does not yet exist.
Digitally fluent students produce new, original and exciting creations that are at the heart of innovation.
3. Leverage the stages of design thinking
Many stages of the design process allow space and time to reflect on problems, think about ideas, test them, and arrive at a final product. By leveraging similar stages of design thinking in our classrooms, we can systematically foster innovation while using tried-and-true principles.
Start at the problem formulation stage, where you ask students to reflect and think about their environment, what they would like to create, and who that creation will serve. For example, Siri and Alexa were developed to provide humans with information based on the questions they have, eliminating the need for manual research on the weather, traffic conditions, recipes, etc.
Once students come up with a problem, they can participate in the ideation phase, where they brainstorm and brainstorm ideas to solve it. What would follow would be prototyping and testing, and through all these stages of design thinking, innovation can evolve naturally.
4. Motivate through mistakes
With so much focus on grades, assessments, and standardized tests, students often stress over perfection. This can stifle creative thinking, as students may focus on doing only what needs to be done to earn an “A” grade.
To provide an environment where students can truly innovate, they need to be encouraged to take risks and try something new, even if it means they make mistakes along the way.
You can model this approach by showing when you make a mistake and using it as motivation. Students can then think about doing something in a different way, by removing or adding a component, or using alternative digital tools and materials in a design. This is what learning is all about, and what better way to approach it than using previous experiences and results as a basis for improvement?
I hope you can try one or all four ideas to encourage innovation in your classroom. Cultivating entrepreneurial mindsets, focusing on digital fluency, leveraging the stages of design thinking, and motivating through mistakes will not only help develop students' interest and engagement research, but they will also have a greater interest in the lesson, which will result in the fulfillment of the learning outcomes.
