Innovation Killers in Education

From my experience, those "killers" come from 1) teacher, 2) student, 3) school.

Teachers play an important role in education since teachers are the one who teach/transfer knowledge to students and help students avoiding making mistakes from experience. Belief of teachers is the most challenge. If teachers don’t want to carry out something new, it is no way to let students get something new. It may appear amount some “success-teachers”. They are the teachers whose students are getting good results in school/public examination. The success-teachers sometimes think it is useful using their original teaching style, why bother changing it into something they do not be so familiar? It may be the first reason. The other reason is that the success-teachers face lots of pressure from the parents/schools. Schools/parents expect student to get an excellent result; if the teachers adopt innovation in their teaching (that means they have to change their styles), students’ good result can’t be quarantined. So teachers may not be willing to take such risk that they may lose their job.

Students may also face similar problem like teachers, especially secondary/universities students. They have already developed their own learning styles and some may not really want to change their habits. Besides, students usually focus on homework (workload). For example, in blended learning, students are encouraged to discuss on internet forum and to share anything related to the courses. Actually it is good for students to learn much more, but, in fact, they may not agree that. They may feel uncomfortable because it is an endless homework for them.

School culture also affects the trend of education. I have met a situation. There are two schools which cultures are totally different. In school A, the principal is very interested in using new technologies but the school teachers are very reluctant to that. In school B, the teachers are happy to change but the principal do not believe that it is not necessary to have innovation in the school. In both cases, innovation cannot be carried out.

Zachary

What do you see are the major reasons for innovation failure and success in education?

In a school that I used to serve two years ago, there was an issue that was brought out every year at the year-end staff meeting, which is to make use of the e-class system to allow students to apply for extra-curricular activities (ECA). Traditionally, the students had to fill in forms in papers and hand them in to class monitors, the class monitors then sorts them and hand in the forms to the corresponding ECA teachers. The ECA teachers will then need to verify each student's application, or to decide which students' application to reject. They eventually generates a list which is posted on the office notice board for the students to check. Such traditional practice uses a lot of paper and takes a very long time. Collecting the forms from each students is a tedious task already, and sorting them by hand sometimes cause error and will waste even more time. The call to use the e-class system was supposed to solve these problems as all the transactions can be done online and man-made errors can then be reduced. However for several years this suggestion had been turned down by most of the teachers in the staff meeting. The major reason for not using this technology is that the teachers are not confident enough to use the system, They did not believe that using the e-class system is going to save them time, but thinks that it will cost them more time to learn how to use the new system. Therefore they feel more comfortable sticking to the old method which they already got used to, including the old problems that they already got used to meet.

I think one of the major reasons for innovation failure in education is it is very difficult to change teachers' beliefs. If the teachers were not convinced that an innovation is going to help them, they tend to become very reluctant to try it out. I think one of the ways to increase the chance of success of innovation is to create more chance of success experience for teachers. And certainly this needs to be done along with enough training and coaching in order to make sure that the teachers have enough skills and feel comfortable with using the innovative practice. Afterall teachers can always challenge innovative practices by saying 'if my old way could get the job done, why should I consider doing it the new way?' And that I believe, is one of the major obstacle to innovation success in education.

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Dennis Chan

My expectation and my experience on Innovation

Hi, everyone, I am Zachary.

I am a software engineer that often manage some web-based system projects.

Some of that are educational systems, such as, e-Learning, e-Testing. Through these projects, I find that it is really hard to introduce IT, or innovation to the schools. Coz some of the schools do not really believe what IT can benefit to both the teachers and students. And they just use some old-style teaching/learning. I am not sure it is the best way for education.

Some teachers believe IT and innovation can help students to learn. But the problem is that they don't really know what technologies/tools they can use, and also they are too busy to design something that students are interested in.

Therefore, I want to develop something new to help teachers and students.

Kevin - Identify one example from your group of an educational ICT-innovation and it’s impact on practice

I am a local secondary school teacher. In my school, many ICT facilities were set up in this academic year, including iPad2, net books, notebook for teachers, and interactive white board. Our school hopes that students can learn in more interactive and collaborative way by using those facilities. In summer time, All teacher needed to back to school to have training course on how to use those ICT facilities. In the coming new academic year, some of the teachers who is younger and more enthusiastic have more power and generate more innovative ideas to use those ICT materials, just like role play games; online competitions, discussion in forum etc. while most of the teachers who is elder and more ‘sustainable’, they feel very worried and wondered on how to use ICT facilities. They like chalk and talk and they thrust they can teach the best students in the public exam.

I am the one who want to make use of those ICT materials on teaching and learning. In this year, I try to setup a google site for my students, create various chat room and discussion forum for student learning. I give up using powerpoint that provided by educational press and make my own teaching material that compatible with interactive white board.

During the lesson, I found that I started to change my educational pedagogy. In my lesson planning, I have to consider students’ activities rather than teaching content, because I want students to use those ICT materials, I want them try more and construct the knowledge by themselves. Although it is very time consuming, students evaluate that the lesson they take is interesting and meaningful. I believe that I am going on the right track.

My expectation of MITE 6310

Hi, I am Kevin Tsang, A local secondary school teacher who teaching science and infomation technology. In my preious teaching and learning experience, chock and talk is a formal teaching pedagogy for all local teacher. No doubt that, it is an effective way of getting high mark for public examination. But it is so Boring for students and not a good way for low motivational students. In order to generate more new ideas to change my teaching and learning concept, learning new pedagogy which can suitable for new generation. Make teaching practice more interactive and engaging is my goal to learn in this course. Hpoe we can generate more ideas in the coming lesson. ^_^

Megha - Introduction + Example

Hi everyone,

I've lived in Indonesia for over 20 years and for the last five 've worked for the Education Unit at the World Bank as well as for the statistical unit at UNESCO Bangkok, for a year.

My work involves a lot of interaction with policy makers at the national level. I'm doing the Masters because I want to be more informed about ICT in Education, and I want to be able to share my knowledge with policy makers in Indonesia and in other developing countries.

Example of ICT innovation:
I've just uploaded a couple of videos on youtube. The videos are of real classrooms in Indonesia.
1. Teacher using a computer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr_3Df6gJ44
2. Teacher using a blackboard - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Vw7MIsrk4

I think the one in which the teacher is using the computer and the projector, I find the students are much more engaged, they are laughing and paying more attention. In the one where the teacher has his back turned to the class the entire time to write on the board, the students are quiet and maybe even asleep!

In this case, technology definitely affords the teacher to ability to improve his interaction with the students. He has to prepare for the lesson before class (which saves time during class for actually teaching, unlike the teacher with the blackboard who spends most of his time just writing on the board). I think this is an example of technology changing teaching practice.

Your thoughts are most welcome.

Introducing myself

My name is Dennis, I am currently having my second year in my M.Ed.(Sci Ed.) studies. I chose this module as one of my electives because I would like to see what new practices are out there which I could possibly apply in my own classroom in order to engage my students in a better way. Its nice to meet you all.

Just to say hi

Hi, I am Kevin.

This is the first time I am using Blogging.

I have to spend some time to explore the functions of this stuff.

Nice to met you.