Working At The Edge

Make School Different: Digital leadership & Transformation

Looking for something?

  • Blog
  • Randy Ziegenfuss, Ed.D.
  • Podcasts
    • TLTalkRadio
    • Shift Your Paradigm
  • Presentations
  • Recognition
  • #FETC 2020

What I learned about innovation at Edcamp Hershey – #sweetpd

By Randy Ziegenfuss

Screen Shot 2015-07-27 at 7.05.54 PMA few weeks ago I shared some thoughts on innovation in a post titled Curious about innovation in K12. Attending Edcamp Hershey today, my colleagues and I took advantage of the opportunity to engage in a conversation with educators about this topic by offering a session, How do we lead innovation? — supporting curriculum, instruction and assessment. Thanks to my leadership colleagues Ross Cooper (@rosscoops31), Ken Parliman (@kenparliman) and Rob Sawicki (@sms8thgradess) for sharing in the conversation as well.

The session went well and I was particularly pleased with the way we structured it. We started with a modification of the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), asking the participants to brainstorm questions around the topic of innovation. After generating as many questions as possible in the allotted time, we asked them to add the 3 most important questions to the session document. Be sure to click through to see what we came up with. The questions then provided the fuel for an extended conversation that lasted around 40 minutes.

Reflecting on the hour, here are my three takeaways and a question:

  • Innovation is context dependent. What is innovative in one classroom or school may not necessarily be innovative in another context, for example, an online learning environment. This can also make it challenging to define innovation and messy to implement it.
  • Engage students in conversations. This was also a theme from the last Edcamp I attended. It’s easy to forget about the students, but as we move forward, more clearly defining innovative practices for our leaders, students and teachers, we cannot forget this voice.
  • Innovation must be grounded in a WHY. Innovation for innovations sake is not OK. How is the work tied to what students should know and be able to do? If the innovation is not, then it’s probably not worth doing or needs to be modified so it can be mapped to standards.
  • Where are the leaders? Yes…anyone can be a leader, and clearly the participants are teacher-leaders in their school contexts. I mean the school leaders. If we are ever to achieve change that is system-wide we need to have school leaders understanding the value of having these conversations and following them up with action plans. Engaging the leaders (and parents and students) is the only way we will move beyond pockets of innovative teachers. I am grateful we have leaders on the team willing to engage in this important conversation.

Be sure to check out the document for more questions as well as resources shared by several of the participants.

Are you engaging stakeholders in the important conversation about innovation? Why is this important?

Connect with Randy on Twitter and on the TLTalkRadio podcast!

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Randy Ziegenfuss
Follow me
Randy Ziegenfuss
I've retired from public education after 34 years, most recently as Superintendent. In addition to blogging at WorkingAtTheEdge.org, I co-host two podcasts at TLTalkRadio.org and ShiftYourParadigm.org. Learn more at https://workingattheedge.org/about/.
Randy Ziegenfuss
Follow me
Latest posts by Randy Ziegenfuss (see all)
  • A silver lining - January 22, 2022
  • Is our use of tech working against us? 🤔 - September 8, 2021
  • What’s NOT going to change in the next 10 years? 🤔 - September 7, 2021

Filed Under: Conferences, Leadership, Learning

Comments

  1. mattfratt says

    July 28, 2015 at 7:44 pm

    Question formulation technique? Never heard of it; I think I love it. Can see huge value in EdCamp setting!

Trackbacks

  1. Busting myths of creativity in education | Working at the edge says:
    August 2, 2015 at 4:13 pm

    […] in our system. Recently, I’ve been exploring the idea of innovation in education (blog post, Edcamp Hershey, upcoming #currichat on August 5), and when I heard that David Burkus, author of The Myths of […]

Get updates and a FREE ebook!

Get new content delivered to your inbox and the ebook 3 Key Principles of Digital Transformation. The ebook contains valuable information from my experience leading a digital transformation and working with a variety of stakeholders over the past decade.

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

About Working At The Edge:

My name is Randy Ziegenfuss, and I'm a retired public school superintendent and a life-long educator with over 34 years experience developing a passion for teaching, learning, leadership and technology. <read more...>

I first came across the phrase working at the edge while learning about the work of Marzano, et al. School Leadership That Works: From Research to Results. In this work, the researchers define 21 responsibilities of the school leader, one being change agent. A change agent is defined as one who is, "...willing to challenge school practices that have been in place for a long time and promoting the value of working at the edge of one's competence."

Randy Ziegenfuss, Ed.D.

Download your FREE ebook!

Screen Shot 2016-01-02 at 8.30.12 AM

Archives

Categories

Copyright © 2025 · Rand Ziegenfuss, Ed.D.

Press f for fullscreen.