Hate being in the 'standards' rut?  Below are some ideas how to energize your classroom with activities, techniques, and strategies that focus on creativity, innovation, and going against the grain!  Click on the icon to the left of each idea for further explanations, links, or videos.  Want to respond or add to the list?  Visit the Nourish Innovation blog. 

The Definition of Innovation

• Innovation Zen
  Go to #5 for definition of creativity, invention, and innovation

• Another definition

• True Definition of Innovation

• Bringing Innovation to Innovation
  From Excerpted from Innovation Nation by John Kao.

• ZenPundit
  References Kao and other wonderful books and readings.  VERY deep stuff.

• Innovation is an Attitude
  In the Nordic countries innovation is beginning to be part of the high school curricula

• Don't know what I don't know
  Something to be aware of

Idea Generation Techniques

• Tools for creating ideas
  Great long list of methods

• A taxonomy of idea generation methods
  Various methods of generating ideas

Creativity / Innovation Links

• IDEO
  A company that prides itself in helping organizations innovate through design

• Aptera
  The look of cars to come...soon

• Innovation Tools
  Innovation Tools provides entrepreneurs and innovators with a focused, growing collection of the best resources on business innovation, creativity and brainstorming

• Inventors Hall of Fame
  Akron, Ohio

  The Innovise Guys
  All podcasts of a couple funny guys interviewing different people about creativity and innovation.  Worth a look and a listen

• An Introduction to Innovation
  Simple slideshow that covers some key points about innovation

• More links...

Blogs

• Nourish Innovation
  A blog to go along with this website

• Encouraging Innovation in our schools
  From Edutopio - A George Lucas Education Foundation

• Innovation Zen
  A blog that's geared just for Innovation.  This link points to a page that has 'invention stories'

Classroom Creativity Links

• 10 Classroom Creativity Killers
  A wonderful list of creativity killers that deal with teaching Art, but certainly could be applied to other environments

• Conditions for Classroom Technology Innovations
  Research
  The primary purpose of the study was to address “why don’t teachers innovate when they are given computers?”

Lessons and Resources

• Some example lessons and activities
  from our teachers that we feel are innovative

• The Center for Innovation in 
  Engineering and Science 
  Education
  Focuses on projects that utilize real time data available from the Internet, and collaborative projects that utilize the Internet's potential to reach peers and experts around the world

• Online Dissections

• Ohio Treasure Chest

• More links to lessons and resources

Technology Tools

• Wikis   

• Blogs - Blogger / edublog

• Online Graphic Organizer
  -bubbl us

• Online drawing

• Audacity
  Great free program for creating your own mp3 files

• More...

Book List

Some great books on creativity, innovation, conflict, and creating meaningful work spaces

Quotes

Mostly quotes from the books in the list above

Having problems with the bosses?

It's one thing to improve your instructional strategies by including creativity and innovation in your classroom, it's quite another thing to have to fight or defend this strategy.

Professional Links

eTech preparation - The map of my mind

About the Presenters

Your comments are wonderfully appreciated

Last updated on Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Visitors since 1-25-08