I am 75% of the way through the Education and Innovation program and I'll be honest, the classes have been a mixed bag. I was looking for a program that would be useful to my current career in educational sales, but build on my previous experience as a middle and high school teacher. The coursework has done those two things. But, I'll be honest again, several of the topics have talked about the definition of innovation and demonstrated some semi-new apps and software, but generally the classes have been more focused on education than innovation, and almost rarely have connected the two.
But then we started the capstone class and we're currently two weeks in. And I'll be honest, it is kind of scary. I'm pretty sure I'm only understanding about 60% of what I'm reading and viewing. For someone that has been involved with teaching for over 20 years, I'm freaking out a little. But... I am also very excited because we are jumping into the world of innovation with both feet. Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and digital ledger technology were terms that I had NEVER HEARD OF until two weeks ago and I still don't think I can effectively explain any of them (but I'm getting better, though I'm sure my wife is tired of hearing about them). But they ARE innovative and they are the future of not only education, but the future as a whole.
So how am I managing my educational panic. I'm clinging to important repeated words in the course material like democratization and trust. I'm also remembering that our professor, Dr. Rodney, keeps reminding us that this is very new technology and it is just evolving. I think about Matthew Roszak explaining that just like when the internet started "95% of this could go sideways" but that tokenization allows for "participation rights" for everyone.
And the piece of advice I cling to most of all is from an early course in the program, Creativity and Innovation with Dr. Vlad Glaveanu. This was the first course where the content really started to dig into the definition of innovation and what the qualifications were for something being innovative. One of the resources for the course was a Ted Talk from Guy Kawasaki entitled, The Art of Innovation. During the presentation he listed eleven points involved in innovation. And the one that I remember and I have been thinking about as I work to understand the content for this course is "don't worry, be crappy." What he meant by this was that, don't worry about getting it perfect the first time. Embrace the imperfection because whatever you do is going to be better than what you had before you tried. So that's what I keep hanging on to, because I
will be better with the knowledge gained, even if I don't understand 100% of it and even if the technology is new and changing.
#education #innovation
References
Kawasaki, G. (2014, February 22).The Art of Innovation. [Video]. TED. 
Roszak, M. (2017, October 31). The Tokenization of Things.[Video]. TED.
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