3 Principles for Creating a Culture of Creativity in Schools to Unleash Technological Innovation

"While in school, we are often educated into believing that we must succeed---that mistakes should be avoided. But to be successful, we need to learn how to fail and how to respond to failure. What we call failure is really a learning process." Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson, Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons from the World's Most Creative Playground

In today's standardized, testing, and accountability climate, there are major penalties imposed on those who fail. For example, in some states, students who "fail" standardized tests are branded failures by being held back a grade with retention policies that tell students, "Failure is not an option." In other states, teachers whose students don't demonstrate "success" by reaching pre-determined levels of "growth"on standardized tests, find themselves labeled "In Need of Improvement," which might as well be a "Scarlet Letter of Failure" they are forced to wear across their chests until they prove themselves. Finally, in other states, there is the practice of labeling entire schools with letter grades A-F, which is just another device to make sure those who fail suffer the consequences of being a failure. Clearly in our current education system, failure is something to run from and avoid. "Failure is not an option" is the mantra, yet, in today's super-charged, technology climate, failure is exactly what we need. Our mantra should be "Fail early and often" if we want to move forward with innovation. If failure is avoided, so is risk and exploration, two primary ingredients for a culture of creativity within a school, and it is that creativity that drives the innovation necessary to make the most of technology.

If school leaders want to capitalize on what technology has to offer their schools, they must create schools where "failing towards success" happens as rule, and taking risks and exploration is expected. For, as Capodagli and Jackson point out,

"Failing forward is about learning from our mistakes---examining failures and moving beyond them to success." 

In the accountability and audit culture, any failure is treated almost as a sin for which there is no forgiveness.

What then is a school leader to do, to create the kind of culture of creativity that celebrates failure as part of success and creativity? Here's 3 principles adapted from Pixar's Ed Catmull's book, Creativity, Inc. Pixar has demonstrated what a culture of creativity looks like.

1. Remember that "Ideas come from people. Therefore people are more important than ideas." Intuitively, most school administrators begin by focusing on the technology. They assess: What technology do we have, and what technology can we get? They even use the number of smart boards and computers in their buildings to gauge technological progress. That's not how it should be. You can have all the tech toys in the world in your building, but if no one is using them, they might as well be trophies sitting on a shelf. As Catmull points out, you have to begin by focusing on people. You do this by finding "good people" and then supporting them. You develop them, and you give them "running room" to try the new. The same is true with both innovation and technology. Focus on the people first, not the technology.

2. Foster the idea that "mistakes are the inevitable consequences of doing something new" and "a positive understanding of failure." Creating a school climate where mistakes are an accepted part of trying the new is especially challenging in a an educational environment that places a premium on holding all "accountable" for failure by beating them over the head with bad ratings and grades. Too many accountability systems are scapegoat-seeking tools for hunting down and getting rid of the culprits who caused "failure to happen" instead of providing solid feedback that leads to success. It is this that creates a "fear-based" climate where no teacher or administrator is going to step out of safe territory and make great things happen with technology.

3. Avoid allowing your school or district to become infected with the desire to "just play it safe." According to Catmull,

"Even though copying what's come before is a guaranteed path to mediocrity, it appears to be a safe choice, and the desire to be safe---to succeed with minimal risk---can infect not just individuals but entire companies."

There are schools and school districts all around us infected with this "be-safe" virus. They are inflexible and rigid, and the minute a teacher dares step to the edge of innovation, the school of system slaps them back in line. The early reaction of school districts towards cell phones and social media are a great example of this. When school leaders focus on safety alone, they move to risk-minimization mode, which kills creativity and innovation, the very things needed to capitalize on technology. You can recognize a school system that values safety at the expense of all else when they bring technology into their schools. How? It is simply used to do what they've always done. Smart boards become overhead projectors. The Internet becomes a massive online library. Social media becomes just another announcement system. You can't possibly play it entirely safe with technology and expect innovation and creativity.

The challenge then for today's school leader is how do you make it safe for innovation and creativity in a climate that only values success and punishes failure? How do we move our schools, districts, students, parents, and teachers beyond the thinking that "failure is not an option" so they can take risks and explore the edges of innovation with technology? We can begin doing that by focusing on our people instead of counting smartboards and computers. We can make mistake-making accepted step in the path to innovation and creativity. Finally, we need to inoculate ourselves against the "play-it-safe" virus and make risk-taking acceptable. We can't just copy what someone else is doing and call it innovation. We need to unleash creativity by taking Catmull's advice by "loosening the controls, accepting risk, trust our colleagues, work to clear the path for them, and pay attention to anything that creates fear." 

3 Lessons Schools Can Learn From an Obsolete Hometown Newspaper

Today, I was attempting to read an article from our local newspaper's website. I was trying to access an article through my RSS Reader, when I got the following pop-up:

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Our small town newspaper, The Hickory Daily Record, is a mediocre newspaper at best for a number of reasons. First of all, I was once a subscriber, but I stopped home delivery because there would be stretches of days I would not receive it. I would then have to call their office, and the paper seemed content to just give me a credit when I did not receive it rather than find a way to deliver a paper. They inevitably did this rather than resolve the issue of delivery. Secondly, there's not a been a great deal of content in its pages for quite sometime. The paper edition is primarily advertisements, and the paper has had to cut its reporting staff back so much, they aren't even capable of providing the news, except what  news comes to them. Finally, the Hickory Daily Record has become irrelevant as a news source in our region. I can access free news channels such as our local TV stations, and the Charlotte Observer's site and get more information about the happenings in my hometown  than I can in my hometown newspaper. In all honesty, The Hickory Daily Record has become little more than a neighborhood newspaper with absolutely no impact on the community. It is a dinosaur that is still trying to avoid extinction. In some ways, I think public education is trying to avoid the same fate.

As you can see from the pop-up message I received, I could continue reading the article I wanted to see if I paid them $4.95 a month, but I won't pay them and I won't read the article. The whole problem is, the content offered by the Hickory Daily Record isn't worth $4.95 a month to me. You can scan their web site in less than 5 minutes. Unlike the larger newspapers, there isn't a wealth of content, certainly not 5 dollars a month worth. All this brings me to my point, "Newspapers basically still do not get it." While I have no idea how profitable the Hickory Daily Record's efforts to charge for online content is, it can't be sustainable. A glance at their site tells your they offer no amazing exclusive content you can't find elsewhere. A lot of the articles are from news wire services that offer the same text free. And, there is so little news content to begin with, in comparison to larger news sites. The bottom line is my small town newspaper is still caught in 20th century ways of delivering content and appears to be doing little to change. I can't help but wonder if our schools are still caught in the same time warp. We still try to deliver education the way we've always done too. So what can schools learn from my small town newspaper's predicament? Here's three things for thought:

1. In a digital age, we can't simply take what we've always done and post it online or digitize it and call it education. Our technology is clearly disrupting how we do things in our schools, and we'll not contain that force by trying to simply package what we're doing into 21st century packages. We need to fundamentally re-think and re-engineer everything we do in schools and take full advantage of the possibilities of the digital age.

2. We need to fundamentally re-think our digital content which is student learning. If newspapers want to have a hope of surviving online or off, they have to focus on content. People will only pay for content if they see it as engaging or useful, and if they can't get it elsewhere. As schools in the digital age, we must focus on our own "content" which is student learning. Everything we do, from front office procedures to instructional strategies in the classroom need to be about student learning. We need stop being distracted by everything that is not about student learning.

3. Twenty-first century schools need to acknowledge the competition. Newspapers like my small hometown paper haven't done this very well. They are still holding on to the belief that they offer something readers can't get elsewhere. They haven't acknowledged the competition. Whether charter schools, private schools, or virtual schools are better at raising student achievement is still debatable. That argument probably will not be settled any time soon, and most likely it will never be settled. The reality for public schools is that we have competition. Instead of expending large amounts of time discrediting the competition, let's use that energy to make our public schools better. Let's focus on what is most important.

Everyone knows newspapers haven't fared well under the onslaught of web content. Most barely survive. Some have learned that users will pay for content, if that content is of high quality, and if users can't get that same content from elsewhere. My hometown newspaper is still caught in an old paradigm that believes they can approach web content like they did paper content. They can simply post the same content from their newspaper online and people will pay for it. Of course they have tried to add some unique content like videos and information data bases, but its hard to say they've changed their content delivery model very much.  Maybe some will pay 5 dollars a month for this content, but I won't and I am sure many others won't as well. The newspaper is losing me as potential customer and I am sure there are others. If they want me to click that "Pay $4.95 Month" button they need to give me something I do not already have. Public schools would do well learn from this too. If our students aren't getting the education our parents want them to have, they aren't going to keep paying for our schools either. We have to give them the kinds of student learning they can't get elsewhere.