Embracing New Learning Dimensions: Follow the Path of Innovation
Success within your professional career is largely a matter of aligning yourself with the core values of your surrounding environment; but occasionally, adhering to your environment and the status quo may come at the expense of innovation. If the system you’re operating within is corrupt or founded upon skewed values, your innovative idea may not be aligned with the organization’s core values and may threaten its very foundation and your personal success.
This is especially true with institutions that are defined by strict adherence to rules, bureaucracy, policies and a pay system that compensates employees by years of service, not necessarily results…. like public schools. The message sent is to maintain the status quo, get your years of service up, and reap the benefits with a higher paycheck.
When this system of teaching is further reduced to teaching tricks that help learners attain a passing score on standardized assessments, it’s time to embrace innovation.
Will gesture-based learning and mobile devices innovate schools? As an educator, I strongly feel like these two dimensions of learning may help teachers, administrators, students, legislators, and state education agencies share harmony amongst their respective values. For most schools, these new dimensions of learning currently exist as mere ideas that need innovators to effectively integrate them in learning environments.
The road we’ve been traveling to get from point A to point B is inefficient; the route of teaching tricks and “guess-and-check” methods is worn out. The means are just as important as the end; follow the noble path of reasonable innovation.
Mobile devices and using the Kinect for learning are just two new learning paradigms to explore; what other innovative avenues have you been exploring? Feel free to leave your comments below or on the K12 Mobile Learning Facebook Page.
