Communicating Your Ideas

In the video Communicating a Vision for Change, Jon Kotter warns viewers of how easy it is to under communicate during a change project and the impact this can have on significant change efforts within an organization. Under communicating happens so easily because, as teams are working on a huge change project, the large amounts of information they are constantly taking in and communicating back out makes it seem like they are over communicating (Kotter, 2011). As a result, when the project team reaches the phase when they really need people to understand what the project is and why they want to implement it, they have a tendency to use only a few channels, speeches, memos, or electronic equivalent which, in the lives of those they are communicating to, is only a small percentage of the information they encounter on a daily basis (Kotter, 2011). This, in turn, causes the information to be lost, forgotten, or not fully understood. This is a huge mistake. If innovators want to be successful in launching their innovation plans and pushing change along, they need to communicate using new, interesting, and efficient forms of technology that delivers information in lots of different ways to lots of different people constantly on a daily basis (Kotter, 2011).

Lisa Nielsen provides readers with information to evaluate whether or not they are an innovative educator in her blog post Are You An Innovative Educator? Here's How to Find Out. In order to classify ourselves as innovative educators, we must provide environments where students can engage in innovative, real-world experiences they find meaningful and inspire students to implement and share their ideas and/or work in the real world or communicate their ideas to someone outside the classroom who can help those ideas or work come to life (Nielsen, 2016). To give readers a better understanding, Nielsen includes a table with examples to show the difference between innovative/real learning and learning that is simply interesting/relevant. Based on the criteria for being considered an innovative educator presented earlier and the examples in the table, the main quality that makes learning innovative is communicating and sharing real-world learning experiences with the community outside of school in an effort to benefit them in some way.

The content presented this week helped me to realize two important things, one about about myself and the other about communication. First, I learned that I am not yet an innovative educator and being one actually entails much more than I previously thought. Prior to reading the blog post by Lisa Nielsen, I viewed innovative technology from the angle of how it affects the classroom environment exclusively. At no point did I consider having my students use what they have learned to tackle a real-life issue head on and then share their learning experiences with others outside of our school community. This was a big eye opener and gave me other ideas to consider as I move my innovation plan forward. My current implementation plan involves the flipped classroom model and this new information makes me think that I want to incorporate project-based learning as my classroom component. With the project-based learning, my students will be able to finally engage in authentic, meaningful learning experiences that make for truly innovative education that they can document and eventually share with others outside of the school community via technology.

The second thing I learned from the content presented this week is how vital effective communication is to successfully launching innovative change. In particular, having various methods for communication and frequent communication with the target audience can have a huge impact on whether an innovative change plan sinks or swims. Therefore, when I begin the process of launching my innovation plan, I will need to make sure that I use a wide assortment of technologies to deliver information so that everyone remains informed and on the same page regardless of the type of communication they choose to use. Utilizing multiple forms of communication will also be useful for times when technology may be interrupted. By having several avenues of communication, the target audience has plenty of alternative ways to receive information even if their preferred method is not working properly. Once I have set up multiple communication channels, I will then need to utilize these channels to communicate constantly with the target audience on a daily basis (Kotter, 2011). By communicating constantly with my target audience in different ways, they will always be informed of what is happening throughout the change process which makes understanding the project easier. The daily, consistent communication will also keep the idea of change constantly on the target audience’s minds.

SOURCES:

Kotter, J. [drjohnkotter]. (2011, March 23). John Kotter - Communicating a Vision for Change

[Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGVe3wRKmH0&feature=youtu.be.

Nielsen, L. (2016, March 13). Retrieved from https://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2016/03/are-you-innovative-educator-heres-how.html.