This is the eighth year that Minnetonka has had an annual Big Hunt for Ideas to find ways to make education better for students. Rather than developing a strategic plan with a few representative voices deciding district priorities, we use we use a crowd sourced software platform to gather input from all of our staff. Innovation is now our strategic plan. We also have student innovation groups that use this process to develop new ideas. Some major ideas over the past few years include our Vantage program, TonkaOnline, Minnetonka Research, Design for Learning program, and Tonka Codes program.
This year we are encouraging staff to simply post problems rather than jumping right to solutions. These problems are called "sparks" and are meant to get a conversation going in an effort to empathize with those affected by the problem and identify all stakeholders. From these starting conversations ideas will be generated in the coming months and possible solutions discussed, piloted, and as a result, changes implemented.
The video above was produced to highlight this process with a example scenario--a crowded hallway during passing time. The video showcases a wide variety of school employees participating in the spark discussion- classroom teachers, a counselor, a custodian, and a school principal. Together they collectively work to identify the issue and it's impact.
All of our staff participate in this hunt--besides these staff positions highlighted in the video we also have paraprofessionals, food and nutrition services, office support, after school staff and all administrators involved. In just the past two weeks, almost 100 different sparks have been identified with hundreds of comments and views from staff. Pictured is an infographic made by our Innovation Coordinator, Nicole Snedden. The idea hunt is open for another week, so we will certainly have more added with more participation. It will be exciting to discover what new innovations and solutions result from this year's hunt!
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Related posts:
- Student Led Innovation Through Human Centered Design
- Minnetonka Schools: Innovation is Now Our Strategic Plan
- Minnetonka Schools Big Idea Hunt
- Minnetonka Schools Innovation
- Flipping Parent Curriculum Night
- Systematic Innovation: The Top 4 of 40 Inventive Principles to Solve Problems
- The Mindset of Innovation: 5 Behaviors for Accelerating Breakthroughs
- Accelerating Changes Needed in Education
- Minnetonka Research: An In Depth, Highly Advanced High School Research Program
- Tonka Online High School Starting Year Five with 40+ Courses & 1200+ Students
- Why Teach Coding? Same Reasons to Teach Writing Even When Not All Students Will Be Writers
- Minnetonka Top 100+ Ideas for 1:1 Integration in 5th grade, English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and World Language
- Design for Learning Project Lead Nicole Snedden Wins ISTE Award
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