 Hello and welcome to the 2014 K-12 online conference. My name is Wes Fryer, and I'm in my backyard in Oklahoma City. We're gonna be talking about igniting innovation in the conference this year. And I wanna start by thinking about the way that a fire and getting a fire started, and not just started but sustained so that it can be used for good purposes like cooking s'mores can be a metaphor for what we see happening in our schools and the ways in which we can act as change agents in our school, having our own innovation and creativity ignited, but also igniting innovation for others. So we've got our fire pit here and I've got this big log, and it probably seems obvious, but if I want to make a fire, I'm not gonna be able to get this big log burning right away. I suppose I could use gasoline, which I've never done before. I could use lighter fluid, that'd be a little safer, and I could kinda cheat, but as a good Boy Scout, I'm going to try and start my fire without using any kind of aids like that. In fact, we might even try to start it with a spark. This is an old magnesium fire starter that I had from years ago, and when I take some steel and I put it up against the spark, I can get a nice spark here, but I'm not gonna start a fire. Even if this wood is really dry, it's not gonna light when I simply try to have the spark here against the log. I'm going to wanna be very deliberate and very purposeful as I collect my materials and try to get this fire going. We've started organizing our sticks in some piles, and these are even a little bit thick. If we're going to wanna get a fire started and not even use anything else, but just wood, we're gonna probably want sticks that are even thinner than this, but I don't have anything thinner right now. So I'm gonna use what I have, and I'm going to problem solve with the goal of getting a fire started and so as we take a look at this process, I'm gonna ask three questions of myself and try to answer them, and I've also asked several other people to chime in to try and tell us what ignites your spark of innovation for school, for learning as a teacher, but we don't just want that spark to be lit, we want it to be sustained and to keep going. So that's question two, what sustains your spark? And then the third question is what gets the spark going or gets the fire going or is the spark for folks who aren't early adapter innovators? Everett Rogers was a researcher, I think in the 1950s, looking at how innovation distributed across agriculture, and he has a very famous curve that is sometimes called the technology adoption curve and it identifies different regions and probably as someone watching the K-12 online conference, you are an early adapter innovator. Now, you also might be a pre-service teacher whose professor or instructor has asked you to watch this video. You also might be in a professional development setting where you didn't choose to watch this, but someone's showing this to you. I don't know, as David Warlick said in his keynote in 2006, where you are or when you are in time as you watch this, but I do know that in every single school, there are people all across this graph in terms of their enthusiasm and their desire to adopt technologies and innovative practices and to basically change. The strategies that are gonna be effective to help people who are early adopter innovators are not necessarily the same as those that are gonna be utilized by folks who might be considered early majority, late majority or laggards, people who are not at all wanting to embrace the new change. So we're gonna take a look at those questions and you're not gonna be limited to hearing from me, you're gonna hear from some other people as well. So let's get started and try to start a fire with some sparks. I'm Rachel and I would like to talk to you about art. Art is one of the things that I like to do being creativity and using your brain and sharing. See at my school, only fifth graders have art teachers and get to do art and get the experience. Well, I feel that first graders should be allowed to do art is one of the things that I like to do. Here's one of the drawings that I did when I was young and even I still like to do art. Even when I was six, I like to do art. And to all ages, it was all still the same. I think that using your brain and creativity is a good thing that first graders should be allowed to do art because it's a feeling that you can do it and using your brain and just doing what you're told to do inside. So I think you should go on and keep moving and keep trying and getting it right. Getting a fire started using literally a spark is really a challenge. Even when you have everything prepared and everything in order, it can be really difficult to even get a fire going at all. And so getting innovation going in school might be a little bit like this. We've been trying to get innovation and creativity and change happening in school for many years. And some people think that technology is really the answer. Like technology maybe is this match. Technology is what we're gonna be able to strike and it's just gonna be magical. But look at that, the wind, even though we're not having a storm here, it's just a little breeze, just snuffed that out. Technology by itself is no panacea. Meaning it is not the answer to our need for creativity and innovation and change in schools. A match can certainly be powerful and look how quickly the match was able to light this lint. But we saw how quickly it got snuffed out and similarly if we aren't careful as we have this lint going to protect the flame, to keep it actually quickly getting in contact with some other sticks that are smaller, that flame can quickly go out and our entire fire can go out. In fact, that's one of the reasons why when you're starting a fire, you don't wanna use a lot of grass because grass can start really quick, but it just burns out and it doesn't sustain and catch. So you can see here in our fire, which for the record was a two match fire, we've gotten a flame started here and I think we're gonna be okay. I think our fire is gonna keep going and we're gonna be adding some additional sticks to this fire and my daughter who is shooting the video here, you can shoot it with me is remarking that this is smelling good. We're gonna cook some s'mores tonight on this fire. As you think about your school and you think about how it is that you can get fire going and get that spark going, think about this as a metaphor and you can go ahead and shoot me and I have to shoot the fire, thank you. Think about the ingredients that you're going to need, the team that you're going to need. When you're by yourself, it's kind of like you're that lone match trying to get that big log started or maybe even the spark that we were trying to do earlier off that magnesium fire starter. It's pretty hard. So it's not enough to just have technology to have tools. You've got to really have the people and the ideas in place to keep that fire going and to get that sparked. So let's turn to some other folks and see what they think about sparking innovation and what ignites their innovation, what provides that spark for them. Innovative work is ours to be sparked. It's a journey that begins whenever we start. Start doing, start creating, start playing and wondering. Keep asking, keep trying, keep growing and blundering. Write everything down and connect them to spaces. Notice patterns in people and visit new places. Seek interesting leaders on the edge who flourish, build from their energy, their passion and courage. Ideas amplify through selective distractions. Discover and tinker with random interactions. Get away from the comfort to embrace tension and clashing. Possibility thrives when we push through the thrashing. Just go, learn, make, share, repeat, then stop. Listen, dream, rest and think. If innovation was easy, then it wouldn't be so. To make change happen, you have to find your flow. In my classroom today, my kids come back next week and they're exactly who ignites my passion about innovation. I work in Chicago Public Schools, which if anybody knows the narrative around public education, specifically, public urban education and the negativity that goes with kids who are tested regularly, kids who are coming from poverty or from challenging home or neighborhood situations, and those things inspire me to make sure that my kids have this world-class education where they have a chance to say, I invent, I use my voice, I inspire others. And technology is one of the tools that I've found really can amplify those things for my students. So changing that narrative about what public education is or can be is the thing that really inspires me and I want my kids to leave saying I'm an advocate in my community, my voice matters. I have access to the world and I can make changes in that world that are positive. So my job as the lead learner of my students is to make sure that innovation that's around me or that people are sharing is something that my kids then have access to. So whether that's, as you can see behind me, my mobile furniture in my classroom or technology like iPads, but more importantly than things in the classroom, it's kids having an opportunity to experience those things and say this matters to me, this helps me as a learner, this helps me as a person, this helps me as a community member. And those are the things that inspire me to continue to innovate as an educator so that my students have this experience that can change their narrative and improve their situation. I am in Visalia, California, which is about 40 minutes to the southeast of Fresno. I'm about 40 minutes southwest of Sequoia National Park in the San Joaquin Valley and this area is in the midst of a huge drought and driving in, it says severe drought, help us to conserve water in areas like this where they're growing plants. It's really essential that they have irrigation. I don't know if you can see here, but this is some water. Then over here we've got some irrigation pipes that are bringing water to these plants and water is just, it scares here and it's in low supply. The internet and communication on the internet used to be a lot like this. There wasn't much being communicated and we didn't need to have the same skill set and the same tools that we need today to filter information. The internet started out pretty quiet and it's certainly not quiet today. It's certainly not like the trickle of water that is coming here to these plants in the midst of the La Nina influenced drought in the central California Valley. Information landscape today in 2014 looks a lot more like this than it does a little trickle of water and one question might be, how are we managing to not only navigate but also filter this incredible stream of water which is the internet, which is the information, which is so many connections that are all around us. Clay Scherke is one of my favorite authors and he talks about filter failure and sometimes when we have information overload it's because of filter failure but I don't think we need to just learn how to filter information. We also need to learn how to make personal connections amidst this incredible onslaught of information and data which is only going to get more and more crazy in the years to come. Just like I will be looking for my family that is here around, I think we need to be looking for personal connections on the internet and that's part of why K-12 Online is so powerful. It's been a very, very powerful and important part of my personal learning as a teacher since it started in 2006 and the reason is K-12 Online lets us make those personal connections to different people so it's not a matter of just being overwhelmed with so much information, so many apps, so much data, it's an opportunity to connect to individuals and the people and to go places together and that's what we want to do. We want to go amazing places and we want to bring our kids along, right? We want to bring our students and we want to take them places that they haven't been before and provide opportunities for learning that they wouldn't have had before. Our daughter Rachel is helping us now put some additional sticks and logs on the fire to go ahead and get this going and Rachel actually doesn't have a lot of experience with fires and that's one of the reasons this is exciting. Fire is dangerous, right? Change in school is dangerous. Rachel, you can go ahead and keep putting on quite a few of those. I know, but. It's a- I thought it didn't go in. Yeah, that's okay. Just try to get them on there as best you can. It's a good metaphor to think about children adding fuel to the fire and the role that kids play because for me personally, one of the most powerful stimulants for innovation, sparks for igniting innovation has been students and student work and student voices. Whenever I have a chance to hear student work, whether that is an e-book that students have made, a podcast, a video, I really look at that as fruit. We're not very good gardeners in our family right now. We tried actually, I think summer before last to do a little gardening. We tried cantaloupes and corn and pumpkins. We did get some cantaloupe, but that was about it. But the process of helping students learn in school, yes, it's lighting a spark, but it's also planting a seed and cultivating and providing the environment that is going to produce fruit. And some of the fruit, some of the most important fruit in our classrooms I think are the examples of student work, student media. That's one of the most important ways we can be using media today and using our technology tools is not just as a place to consume and to get information and content, but to allow students to create and to produce and to share their ideas. So if you don't currently have a place to share the work of your students openly on the public internet, I, Wes Friar, want to encourage you to do that because it is so inspirational to be able to see student work and to see examples of what students are doing, to see student creativity. Unfortunately, sometimes in school, our default position when it comes to sharing is to keep stuff private. And there are reasons to keep things private. There are students whose parents, because of custody situations or all kinds of other factors, need to not have their picture shared and maybe even their work shared. They need to keep it a secret that they're at that school. I've taught students like that and you probably have as well. But for a lot of students, it is okay to share student work. And if we hide behind a password and we put everything behind a protected login, we can really steal a tremendous amount of the power that's available for being able to ignite, not only ignite our innovation, but ignite the innovation of others, inspire others with creativity. Well, just like this fire pit is a prepared space. We need to prepare the spaces for our students to be able to share their work online. An important part of that means having moderation. So having a way to be able to moderate posts that students put on there, comments that students put, and comments that parents and other visitors to our websites put on. One thing that's ignited my innovation quite a bit is a project that's called Comments for Kids on Twitter. And if you're not familiar with it, you can just search Twitter for hashtag comments the number four kids. And what that hashtag will hopefully bring to you are examples of student work and teachers from around the world who would like others to comment on their student work. Any way that you can showcase and share the work of your students, you may be the person at your school who is the first one to share student work. Just like we would not be very responsible here in our backyard. If we were going to start a fire where we didn't have a fire pit, where we didn't have the area prepared, where we didn't have some water that we could throw if we had the fire expand beyond the fire pit. That's the same kind of thing that you need to do in your classroom is to prepare a space where students are going to be able to share because there is danger in sharing online. Internet safety is very important. We do need to be safe. We need to have policies that allow for parents and students to opt out if they don't want to share. But what would our evening be like tonight if we're going to try to have s'mores and be outside without the fire if we didn't have the campfire? Similarly, in your classroom, it's really important to have that space to share. So there's a few thoughts. I wonder what some other people have said about sparking innovation. Innovation for me is ignited when I think really hard about how whatever it is can be done differently. I often ask myself a super, very important question. Why are we doing it like this? Doing something in a certain way because that's the way it's usually done is a really terrible reason to keep doing it that way. There are other questions, of course, that follow on from asking why. So to dig down deeper to new ideas, I do things like think, what if I took this element away? What if I wasn't allowed to do it like that? For example, I recently said to a lecturer, what if I told you you weren't allowed to have PowerPoint or any slides at all? How would you do things so it was still engaging? His eyes widened and you'll just have to stay tuned for that result. So other questions I ask, does this really suit these learners? What does suit these learners? What would they enjoy something different? How can I adapt that approach over there to that task over here, even if it's an approach that is said to be for something that's seemingly unrelated? Oh, that's too bad, I'm gonna try it out anyway. So my innovation is ignited by my desire to do things differently in order to try new things and to find better ways to teach. I love change, I welcome it, I seek it out and I even create it as often as I can. And it seems to work quite well. I celebrate innovation through differentiation and personalized learning. In my classes, in the informational age, I know there are one word answers, for example, three plus seven equals 10, but I wanna find out from my students, how did they arrive at that? Was it counting up from three? Was it counting up from seven? Or did they know that fact family of three, seven, 10, 10, seven, three? That's what's really important, those connections and how they make those connections. The celebration of innovation will provide us new learning and new connections. I am an innovator. I am always looking for new answers to old questions. Statements that I think I saw on a poster a number of years ago involved mowing and grass. And it said that the tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the mower. You can see that yesterday when my son and I were mowing, this very long blade of grass managed to avoid being cut. And that's a little bit rare because usually it's gonna get cut down. And in this conference this year for K-12 Online, talking about igniting innovation, we're gonna talk not only about how to ignite the spark, but how to sustain the spark, how to not be that tall blade of grass that's cut by the mower. It can be hard to stand out in a school. A lot of times our schools are very focused on standardization. And I think that one of the most important ways that we can be encouraged and continue to try and innovate and not lose our spark is to be inspired by the examples of others. And so the K-12 Online conference for me personally, since it started in 2006, has been an extremely important part of my learning. It is very inspirational to see what other teachers and librarians and administrators and especially students are doing with technology. And so we'll take a look at what some other folks have said allows them to sustain their spark and keep on burning and not be burned out or cut by the mower as it were. We're talking about innovation and how do we maintain that spark? Well, I think there could be five C's. And the first one is having that kindergarten wide-eyed look at the world, curiosity. It's about asking a lot of questions and sticking to them. It's about wanting to find out what other people are up to and how they're doing things. It's also about wanting to make things better or even prettier. Curiosity is a huge factor in innovation, I think. And the second is curation, which is that hunting and finding and contextualizing and adding value. It's that seek, sense and share that Jacqui talks about. I try to curate something every day because I want to fill myself up with inspiration. That's the role of curation plays. And the next one is more about people. It's about connection. I think this is also about environment. You can have a digital connection or physical. But whatever it is, you're surrounding yourself with interesting people that are going to inspire you and build you up but also call it like it is and give you constructive criticism. So I think connection is extremely important and often leads to collaboration, really working together on a creative project, combinatorial creativity. And my friend Brad calls it playing in a sandbox with cool people. Most of my best work actually comes from collaborations with other people. And I think this is where technology really facilitates this because I don't just have to collaborate with the people in my brick and mortar environment. And finally, creation. Just doing it, making time for it every day, the white space that you need to create. And even if it's just a little snippet of your day, it could be a photo challenge or a sketch challenge or a little blog post. It's really important to create and not only create but share because the feedback that you get from sharing is the fuel to keep you going. So I really think that's in a nutshell what it's all about. Don't wait to create and share, dare to share. What sustains my innovative spark? Simply just trying things. I think it's a lot of fun to break stuff. And when you break something, that's when you learn the most. Whether it's learning how to fix your furnace or it's learning how to write some code or it's learning how to edit a video. I think the fun part of learning is breaking things and learning from that experience. And that's what keeps my innovative spark going. Anytime I see something new, I say to myself, I want to try that. I want to see what happens. If it goes horribly wrong, you know what? I learned from it. And that's how I keep my innovative spark going just by trying a whole lot of new things. I am here in Sequoia National Park in California. We are somewhere between five and 7,000 feet above sea level on the western side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. And I am absolutely blown away by how huge these trees are that are around me. And I'm about to go to the General Sherman tree, which is the largest tree in the world by mass. And it's estimated to be 2,200 years old. And I have never been around, never seen, never touched any trees this old. And this tree, which is behind me, is the reason why I wanted to shoot a video right here because this tree is alive, but if you can see in the video, it was struck by lightning. And it looks like almost half of the tree has actually burned, but the tree is still alive. And as you look up into the sky, it's still growing green branches and it's still alive. You know, when we ignite innovation, sometimes we get burned and sometimes things happen that are difficult to survive. And if you're watching this video as someone who's an early adapter innovator in your school, you've probably had situations where things have gone wrong and lessons that you've tried and maybe you've done things, you've stuck out your neck and tried things that you took some flak for. And I think we can reflect a little bit, oh my gosh. As we're around these incredibly huge trees, how are these trees survivors? How have these trees managed to persist? You know, not just hundreds of years, but thousands of years. And I would say part of that has to do with the deep roots that they have. These trees, I was reading in the visitor's guide that the number one way that Sequoias die is they're toppled over when their taproot hasn't had an opportunity to get deep enough. And as we think about being innovators and igniting innovation and sharing innovation with others, obviously we're gonna face a lot of difficulties and we're gonna face a lot of trials. And just as these trees have survived, we can survive as well and we can persist. And even though we have some scars, even though we've faced some trials, the deep roots that we have, the connections that we have to each other, the connections that we have to our students, right? Because relationships really are what good education is all about and strong relationships, just like strong taproots. This tree, or this tree right here, it would not be standing here if they didn't have deep roots. And so just as these trees have deep roots, we need to have deep roots of relationship, not only with our students, but also with each other. And that's what the K-12 online conference can do. It can provide opportunities for us to connect with other educators, to hang out via Twitter, via people's blogs, via social media, and then through the presentations that people are gonna share to be able to persist and to grow strong and to be like these enormous sequoias wise in our ways, but strong and able to withstand the fires of difficulty that will come in the classroom in the days, months, and years ahead. So, Rachel, come here for a second. What's happened to our fire? It's going out. It's going out? Oh. Do you think it's dead? Is it gone? No. No, you think we can get it going again? Yeah, it's just kind of tired and lazy. Well, ooh, and I took off my glasses. Why don't you go see if you can put some other sticks on here, because these are coals and I'm gonna bet that even if you get some of those larger sticks and put them on there, we're gonna be able to get this going again. So, getting innovation going, getting creativity going in our schools. Oh, here, let's break that up. Yeah, that's too long. It's gonna be a process. And it's not gonna be just a spontaneous process. I mean, sometimes when we put technology in schools, folks think it's just gonna be this amazing spontaneous process where, wow, look, we got the technology and then all of a sudden the fire took off of innovation and creativity and it was amazing. That usually doesn't happen. There are all kinds of road bumps and road obstacles and things like that. Let's just go ahead and start getting them. Get a whole handful and then put a whole bunch on there. Things come up and we have to nurture the flame and we have to nurture the fire. And so, we've gotta actually add larger sticks, right? We started this fire very deliberately, very intentionally. We had some lint, we put some small sticks on, but as we go, we need to add larger sticks and we actually maybe should have done that even a little bit earlier to not let our fire get burned down so much. So, for your own innovation, for your own creativity and enthusiasm for trying new things and for being passionate in the classroom, it's certainly possible to kind of have your fire at a lull to have it kind of, we don't want it to burn out, but it can. And I think everybody ebbs and flows with respect to their innovation and how inspired that they feel. So, how do we sustain the flame? How do we keep the fire going? How do we build up the flame? How do we build up the fire? So, we don't get hurt, we don't burn others, we don't burn ourselves, but we keep the fire going. How do we do that? I think that one of the things we really need to do with teachers, just as with our students, is to kind of get them right in the mix of things. Let them play around. Put their fingers in the plateaus, so to speak. We're tired of people telling us what to do and giving us tracks of text and saying, read this and then make change. I think the way to do things is really to get involved and play around and have fun and then give some time to reflect. This has been really effective in the kind of PD offerings that we do at the National Writing Project and also with our making, learning, connecting MOOC this summer and past summer, where it's all about play and exploration. And then, of course, the important part is the reflection element. How will this translate for our students in the classroom? That's Toolbox from when we worked at Boeing during World War II. And I remember as a kid, rummaging around in it and finding tools that, man, I really had no idea what they could be used for. But then as I got older, realizing how some of them could be used, and that was always pretty exciting. And I think that's still kind of true today, that a lot of the hardware and online tools that are available, there's no way you can know what all of them, how all of them can be used. But to just generally be aware what's out there and then when a learning opportunity comes up, being able to think, wow, this new Google Docs thing, of course, this was a number of years ago, we could use that to write our collaborative stories instead of just our blogs or video conferencing. We could use that to share with another class or interview that expert we want to talk to and we use them in substantive ways, not just, oh, mom, we video conference for the class in another country. And those are things that still ignite my innovative fire today. Rachel, what happened to our fire? It like is excited, really, really excited and happy. It came to life. It's pretty hot. In fact, we may have to move some of our logs back a little bit, I think. Was it very hard to get this fire going now, Rachel? No, we just barked. Yeah, we put on some bark. We put on some fuel and we put on some larger sticks. So how can we do that in our school? When we've got folks that have been creative and innovative, we need more fuel. We need fuel for the fire. Where does that fuel come from? Where does the fuel come from to keep our spark burning? When hoping to inspire innovation and our colleagues who are a bit reluctant to change, it's important to remember, as my good friend Lucy Gray always says, not everyone is as excited as we are. But as such, going to them with our passions and trying to get them as geeked up as we are about certain things may not be the best strategy. Instead, let's remember where their heads are at. What are they focused on? What are their needs and goals and challenges? We ask them, what are your problems of practice? What are things that if you had a magic wand you could fix in your classroom? What are the goals that you hope to achieve in your classroom? And let's not throw around words that can sometimes be intimidating like innovation and transformation. Let them set their goals and start small. Help scaffold those goals with innovative strategies so that you're meeting those challenges or problems of practice with innovative ways. And in that way, the teachers aren't feeling like you're asking them to transform for the sake of transformation, but helping them transform old problems through new solutions. And that way, all of that time and effort in working on that innovation and that new thinking feels like it's worthwhile to them because it's solving a problem that they've always had. I think there are two very effective strategies for inspiring educators to rise up to the challenge of embracing change. I think one really critical one is having them ask their students about what strategies they could utilize to best increase their performance in the classroom. I think reflective teaching and reflective learning are really two sides of the same coin. And if you can build a dialogue with students in the classroom about what's working about your instructional strategies or what could improve in your instructional strategies, I think over time that can really lead you to questioning your assumptions and beliefs about teaching and learning and how you fit in that really important equation. I've always thought students' voices are undervalued in classrooms, but oftentimes we don't even go as far as helping students articulate what they may need to be successful in a classroom environment. So I think that dialogue and asking students about what they need or what additional constructs to be built in a classroom to be effective is a really great strategy. Second strategy that I think is also important is encouraging teachers to check their data. And I know, I know we're in very data-rich environments now, and I think in a lot of cases, teachers are being bludgeoned by data, but I think data gets a bad name in classrooms in that oftentimes we collect data, collect data, collect data, collect data, but yet we don't stand there and analyze that data actually create different instructional strategies in the classroom environment. When I say data, I don't just mean standardized test regimes and other types of more formal data collections. I'm talking about the kind of informal data that really does lead to change on a day-to-day basis in a classroom. I think about asking fundamental questions like are you getting out of your students what you wanna be getting out of your students? And I think sometimes that teachers get to a point where they're not getting what they want out of students and instead of figuring out what this classroom can do to change to really inspire students to kind of step up to the challenge, we tend to focus on outside factors as being more critical. And I think that's the wrong end of the equation. I think looking at your data, asking about whether students are performing at a level that meets your satisfaction and it's responding to your stimulus in an appropriate way, if they're not, then I think it's time to find out why and then make changes to make sure that students are appropriately challenged in a classroom that helps them build those tools to be successful. Well, you can see that our fire is burning down a little bit and getting to form some good coals. We can make a little dessert tonight, some s'mores. And as we kind of wrap up this presentation, I wanna share two closing challenges with you. Yes, these are homework assignments. This is your actionable part of the presentation, what you need to do. The first thing I want you to do is create a short video. I'm talking like 60 seconds, not very long. Use a smartphone, and that's what I've been using for all of my video for this presentation. And either have someone else record you or you can record yourself. Like I'm doing for this little clip and tell us what ignites your innovation or you could answer the second question, what sustains your innovation or what do you see igniting the innovation of other people? Answer one of those questions and then share it on YouTube with the hashtag K12Online, my golden retriever thinks I'm down here to visit with her. With the hashtag K12Onlineignite. So that hashtag is going to allow others to aggregate and see those videos. And the other important thing, which I'd encourage you to do is to share that on YouTube with what's called a creative commons attribution license. And what that will let other people do is remix and create other videos. So we can actually have more video compilations that we can create that will include different voices and other teachers in different places sharing thoughts. And just like I've come here to my backyard and gone other places in this video, you can do the same thing as you take those videos and share those videos. So that's your first assignment, hashtag K12Onlineignite and answer these questions and share those with others. Maybe the first time that you've shared a video online, that's fine, you can create a YouTube channel. It is free to do and my dog, Willow, is wanting to be part of the video. I didn't plan for that. Who knows what's going to result as a, you know, positively from the fact that you're gonna share, share your ideas and put those online for others to be able to see and others to be inspired by. Welcome to the T-Tons and this amazing makerspace for our innovative students. But we know that this is not all it takes to foster innovation. As a technology coach and an instructional coach, we provide a safe and self-reflective environment so that our teachers can learn how to be really explicit about the barriers they have to learning something new. If they can do that, then they can set there but that those barriers aside and make a cognitive decision to see something new about their practice and make change. We help teachers to identify projects that are authentic in a real world experience and provide authentic audiences. In addition, we help them to understand the importance of a shared vision of learning between students and staff. So another way that igniting fires and having campfires are a lot like technology is supervision and boundaries. You know, it's a little windy tonight and we were noticing that actually we had to get a little bit of water to make sure that we didn't have a grass fire that started on the side of our fire. You know, fire is dangerous and fire is something that a lot of kids, a lot of people enjoy and like to play with but it can be a great tool. In fact, it can save lives. We were talking tonight about all the ways fire is alive but it's something just like technology that needs supervision and needs boundaries. If we didn't have boundaries here and we didn't have supervision, it could be really dangerous. It might not, it wouldn't be a good thing. And so technology is the same thing. And so it's so important for us to be having conversations with our students and with our kids, with our family members about the use of technology. And... Uh-oh, somebody's marshmallow fall. Oh my goodness, mom, your sister's telling me. Because all kinds of things can happen, right? And even in the time between when I make this video and you see it, I mean, there's gonna be all kinds of new things that are happening. How are we going to stay abreast of these things? How are we gonna be safe and appropriate? We're gonna need to have conversations with each other, with our children, with our students. We need to gather around the fire. It's good. There's good conversations to have. Ooh, and it's yummy, someone says. But it can also be dangerous. And it's really important. It's part of our responsibility as adults to have these conversations with students, to not just send them out here with no supervision, go out into the wide world and start your fires, drive your cars. No, we know that we're going to have to help students learn how to do that safely when it comes to driving. Hopefully when it comes to starting campfires and learning to use fire safely. Same thing goes for technology. Well, the fire has burned down and we're cooking some s'mores and the K-12 online conference is about to get started in earnest. I hope that the conference provides an opportunity for you to hear stories, to share stories, to be inspired to share your own stories. We have wonderful things happening in our schools all the time, but unfortunately, in a lot of places, we're not taking the time we need to share those stories. So I wanna share a final challenge with you in addition to the video challenge. Just like we are engaging in messy learning here, well, messy cooking, cooking some s'mores by the fire, I wanna encourage you to create a space if you don't already have one to share student work at your school. Of course, get permission from parents, get permission from students, but there is so much positive inspiration that we can draw from each other, particularly when we share our work. And I hope that K-12 Online is a transformational experience for you this year and in the future as it has been for me and what makes it great are the fact that we have folks around the world willing to share their ideas and make connections. So enjoy the conference, ignite your own inspiration and hopefully that spark is going to be sustained not only through this school year, but through the years to come and identify some of those things that you can do to not only ignite sparks and get fires going of innovation and creativity at your school, but to keep those fires going and to share the inspiration and to do that through the sharing of student work as well as many of the other ideas which have been shared in this video and which you're gonna hear later in the conference. So take care and good luck as you ignite your innovation and inspiration and creativity in the days, weeks, months and years to come.