ePortfolio Blog Hussain AbdulHussain

The idea of being an innovative educator can seem intimidating because those words create the perception that you have to implement extremely elaborate and ambitious educational program to be one. However, I think an educator can practice innovation just by taking some small steps to improve teaching and learning experiences; by keeping this in mind, I think I am on my way to becoming an innovative educator. I try to not stick to the traditional “sage on the stage” lecture model and give students more opportunities to be responsible for their own learning, whether it is by incorporating technology, doing a hands-on-activity or collaborating with their peers. One challenge of working for large organizations is that it is difficult to make significant changes in educational practices because of the large number of people that are involved in the process; it can be difficult to get everyone on board. This often results in doing things the way that they have always been done, and student

After watching The Power of Words I do feel that our problem in today's world is not the lack of information; with technology most of our society has practically every fact known to man in history at their fingertips. What they need is help with understanding how to interpret facts, knowing how the facts affect them, and which facts should be important to them.To reach them, the communicator needs to use the right words to convey their message. Watching this and the video by the Behavioral Science Guys really influenced  how I approached making my "Call to Action" video.  What my audience needs isn't more information about technology in education, but insight into how it can improve our teaching and learning experiences, and how we can incorporate that into our educational practice. I was really struck by what they said about not making speeches at but asking questions: David: When you are trying to influence people who need motivation and not information

From the examples of innovation seen in the presentations by Joi Ito and Monique Markoff , we can see that Innovative technology and practices often come from those who have few resources and are not part of major institutions. Those who are innovating are living in the moment and coming up with ideas to find solutions for the needs and challenges that they see in their present; these are the “Now-ists” that Ito described. They are willing to work quickly, test out their ideas, are open to continuous feedback and are constantly improving their technology or service. Looking at an environment that I am familiar with, which is Google apps, I see so much new functionality, such as extensions and app add-ons coming from the users and not the actual institution itself. Quite often Google actually adds features to their products based on these third-party extensions and add-ons that were created by users of their products to find solutions for their needs. I really like Ito’s quote “Educa