I was struggling to come up with ideas for my final project in our Innovation & Education program this week. I am also taking the Creativity and Innovation course this semester and this week we are studying the Models & Stages of Creativity. I tend to need more time during the Incubation stage, the period where there is no conscious work. You give your brain a break from the problem and let your subconscious process the information you have gathered.
Last night, I did just that. I shut down my computer and spent some time cooking a nice meal for my husband and me. After dinner, I had that "Aha" moment. I have been trying to come up with an idea on how to be more creative and innovative with my Middle School Math students. I am not only a math teacher in my building but also the Mathematics Department Chair. Part of my role is to facilitate collaboration and professional development within our department in our monthly meetings.
Here is my initial idea for my final project: I would like to introduce the Mathematics Department in my building to HIVE and create a community within the platform for us to share resources, ideas, successes and failures of how we are being more creative/innovative in our instruction, how we are fostering creativity within our students, etc. This could then go further to include other teachers within our district (there is another middle school, k-8 school, High School and multiple elementary schools), the St. Louis region, and beyond.
I would love your feedback and suggestions about this idea!
I think this is a great idea, Denise. At first I was thinking about how it could get tricky to have a platform outside of your school's learning management system as a source of materials but then I reread and realized that it wouldn't be curriculum or content that would be on HIVE, but rather ideas for how to be more creative and innovative in your approach with the content.
Hi Denise,
I like your idea of using HIVE to create a brainstorming community to inspire creativity and innovation in your department. I would think it beneficial to (eventually) include as many stakeholders as you can, including of course the students themselves. Maybe you could start out by holding a dedicated online focus group and expand out from there. I have tried similar ideas with dedicated learning communities on public forums like the now defunct Google Plus (which was taken down due to security concerns). But, as Dr. Rodney pointed out, the fact that the information resulting from these conversations would be securely owned by the group, and controlled by you, is certainly the benefit of a social media platform built on DLT, like HIVE. I also think your idea of promoting input via the platform's token system is a smart way of leveraging these tools to promote collaboration, participation and engagement.
@thomas04 This is an interesting project. Yes. Sometimes the distance from the work is very much needed. This is an interesting project. I think you should certainly explore using Hive as a collaborative space for your Math department. You might want to probe into the benefits of Hive over other mainstream social platforms. I think if your sharing and collaboration are public and built for social sharing and collaboration it could work. The information would be securely owned by your group and you would have control over what happens to it. However it is written to the Blockchain, has rewards and tokenization built-in. So you might want to think about how to leverage these tools to promote collaboration as well as participation and engagement.
I think your idea has real value and I think the timing is very good also. Teaching is always a collaborative process, but during the pandemic people in general have become more comfortable with virtual meetings and connecting through technology. Since you are considering including teacher from other buildings in your district, could you include a section where other teachers could share their content map for the year, that way the district could identify overlaps and gaps? I know mapping isn't a new and necessarily innovative approach, but when I was a computer teacher, I was always looking for ways to collaborate and build on other classes and maps were very helpful for that.
Great idea! I think there are a lot of possible ways this concept could be implemented. Since I am still new to this, I wonder if we should just create a different community for content maps, pacing guides, etc. so as not to muddy the water.
The reason I was leaning toward HIVE through the blockchain was that I was hoping I could use the tokenization aspect to encourage participation. For example, earning a token would enter a teacher's name into a drawing for flexible seating or other items for their classroom. The more tokens, the more times their name is entered. I definitely need more research in this area.
Hi Thomas, I think it's a really great idea to introduce your Math Department to Hive. I think that this would be a good project and it's also beneficial to others. Using the Hive can introduce them to a great new way of introducing concepts to their students as well as communicating with each other!