Which One Do You Wanna Do?
It has been a while since I have heard a really good keynote speaker and Marco Torres fit the bill. Digging around online revealed a popular phrase that he must use: Quit, Complain or Innovate (while he didn’t use it at TCEA, I love the line). Like most of the things that stimulate my writing mind, it has continued to pop up throughout the past couple of weeks. I have a hard time with negativity, and the conciseness of the quote gave me a humble smile with different encounters at work, in meetings and on campuses. We all have choices.
Angela Stevenshas written about our current revisioning of our one to one laptop program in Irving, leading to some nice discussion about what the Academy of Irving ISD will do to take the next steps with community funded bond monies. Additionally, each High School campus has been asked to think about how they can revision their programs to make what we do with students more powerful and more effective.
One High School campus is seriously talking about the option of ditching Microsoft Office and installing only Open Office (open source software) on their laptops next year. This has me wondering if this change could be a rallying point for the campus. ‘We do laptops, and we do them differently.’ I hear a lot of talk about moving to open source, but 2200 students using Open Office may make a big statement.
More than just looking at installing a different software package, plans being discussed include:
- Adding a week of staff development focused on lesson development/technology integration at the beginning of the school year
- Integrating quality one-to-one styled lessons into district curriculum
- Scheduling a class of students that can work on projects to benefit the technology integration at the school
- Developing once-a-week teach sessions that have two components: 1) skills/ step-by-step on how to use something, and 2) idea generation time or thinking about how to use something in context. Teachers could be allowed to choose not only the topic to attend once a six weeks, but also choose whether they wanted the skills or the think piece.
Innovating is not just about doing something new, it is about making a decision to change. This campus is in the initial phases of thinking through that change, and it will require administrator support and a lot of work. But, it is clear what they are going to choose - and that sure ain’t ‘quit’ or ‘complain’. Those two don’t get you very far when the left lane ends.