Building an Innovative Database

You might be thinking to yourself, an innovative database?  What the heck is this guy talking about?  Or, dude, your nuts!

What I am talking about is building a database of innovative lesson plans.  Before we broke for winter holiday, and last week, I asked a number of teachers to write down 2 or 3 of their most innovative lesson plans.  I asked them to do this, because I would like to have a database of innovative lesson plans to reference when a teacher who may not be familiar with what innovation is, comes to me and asks what is innovative?  Do you have an example?  With this, I will have examples.

Over the past year and half, I have worked with the teachers to move up the SAMR scale, to create more lesson plans that are in at the very least Augmentation.  It would be phenomenal if the majority of their lessons are at the Modification level, really make the students think outside the box and challenge them mentally as much as possible.  I realize that Redefinition, by it's own accord is hard to attain; however, it would be great to have at least 1 lesson per year that Redefine what has been done previously.  Realistically, I think that this is attainable. Simply because a Redefined lesson will take much effort, much time, and probably many resources to complete, but for the students, they should be getting the most return from these, sort of a high return-on-investment (ROI), if you will.  

I am excited that the teachers I asked to do this, were very enthusiastic about helping me get this done.  I believe that this will only help us move to be more innovative in the future. Whether technology is used or not, innovation is key, getting students to think in new ways, breaking from the mold and not just hammering home content, content, content, BUT getting students to apply the knowledge they have gained.

Ultimately, application of concepts to a new situation will show mastery of the material.  Simple regurgitation of facts really doesn't show mastery of a subject.  If a student can take a set of concepts, apply them to a new or novel set of conditions or situation and come up with the correct answer, mastery has been achieved.

An innovative database, I'm looking forward to building it with my teachers!