I’ve started reading Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovation. What a great book! It’s got my brain spinning and making some strong connections to our work at the K20 Center.

First, I really like his definition of innovation:

An innovation is an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption.

There are some compelling aspects of education and technology with regards to this definition. Common education has been a slow adopter of innovation and I want to know why and how this can be fixed. This issue is at the core of what the K20 Center does. The concept of innovation as an idea and practice is very important for education and I’m beginning to sense that many, if not most, believe innovation to be related strictly to tools (technology). We know from research (at the K20 Center and elsewhere) that technology adoption in education is most successful when fused to a change in school culture. That change in culture is, in itself, an innovation.

A second important aspect of this definition surrounds the concept of “perceived”. Using a laptop is not an innovation to me. I’ve been doing it for years. The ways I use a laptop may be innovative. But for many educational leaders, putting their hand on a keyboard is innovative. Using a trackpad to move the mouse cursor is innovative.

If an idea seems to be new to the individual, it is an innovation.

Leaders can have a difficult time with innovation adoption. I’m sure their is more psychology worth investigating, but I suspect if an individual’s knowledge base has gotten them the top of the ladder, it can be a challenge to admit their is more worth learning. Unless, of course, one is threatened with extinction. Social service leaders may have the most difficulty with adoption of innovations.

Rogers writes (p.12) an important question innovation researchers address is

…how the perceived attributes of an innovation, such as it’s relative advantage, compatibility, and so on, affect its rate of adoption…

Drilling down into these attributes, the beauty of the K20 Center’s work using the IDEALS model for school change begin to emerge. I’ll tackle one attribute per post:

1. Relative Advantage. Kids are learning so why change? Assessment strategies are key here. If education assessment creates the wrong perception of effective learning, we might as well go home. NCLB isn’t helping in this regard. Assessment of learning is a complicated beast and stupefying it to the level of NCLB will do more harm than good. But what alternatives do we have? Plenty. But proper assessment takes time and wasting it on pouring data into the heads of children does not help.

But let’s assume we begin assessing kids on their problem solving abilities. Not multiplying 3 times 3, but how do you evenly arrange 9 desks in a room? It’s the process we are interested in, not the solution. And it is the process that should be assessed. In the real world, there are multiple solutions to complex problems. In school, we teach our kids there is one right answer and infinite wrong answers. This is not real world preparation. Does this mean we shouldn’t teach the basics? Yes. They’ll learn the basics when they discover the wrong math creates inconsistent results and integral errors when complex problem solving. And please, don’t underestimate kids’ ability to do complex problem solving and project-based lessons. Learning 2.0.

How does the K20 Center contribute to addressing the relative advantage attribute? We take into account the current culture of education. But show that it’s real power comes after cultural change. Some of the best tools for educational change are poorly fitted for the current paradigm of teaching and learning. It’s unfortunate because there are some really awesome tools available to schools that engage kids in complex problem solving and project-based learning.

Nonetheless, there are what I would term, bridge technologies. Technologies that can be effective in both paradigms. And the best technologies are ones that bridge and direct learning towards the new paradigm. These are also technologies that can easily be re-purposed. Here’s one: the laptop computer. Like many innovations, you’ve got to be careful with it. It can send you backwards as well as forward, depending on how you use it. Why? I’ll have to get to that on another post.