Minnesota TIES 2016

Exceptional entrepreneurs are obsessed with questioning the status quo. They fearlessly experiment from a young age and are curious and creative. Learn to teach and model a culture of innovation in your classroom, view examples of how technology can empower you to do things in new ways, explore alternative ways to search the web, removing text from PowerPoints, and having students be teachers. There will be time for participants to share ways they have challenged the status quo.

Dr. Hal Gregersen and his colleagues have surveyed 3,500 executives and creative individuals and closely tracked the habits of 25 exceptional entrepreneurs, all with the aim of figuring out the qualities that set the great innovators of the world apart from everyone else. Read about their findings.

Compliance is doing as you’re told. It’s all about following instructions, not questioning the rules or developing alternatives. Improving requires changes to the status quo!

Below are the examples Tony shared about leaving the status quo behind and doing things in different and better ways.

Examples from THE BUSINESS WORLD

1. Tagless t-shirts
2. Litter Robot cat box
3. Pringles can improvement
4. 99 Life Hacks to Make Your Life Easier
5. Post-it note reminders
6. Post-it Plus iOS app
7. Comedy Club charges per laugh
8. Apple's Think Different ad
9. Android: Be together. Not the same.

Examples From The Digital World

1. My Scrip Calculator app
2. PhotoMath app
3. Dropbox and for online storage instead of a flash drive
4. Copy is a "copy" of Dropbox where you start with 15GB of storage
5. Want to print QR code stickers? Here's the printer Tony uses. Learn more about QR codes.
6. Google's Hiring Process
7. Google's Lazlo Bock's interview about getting a job at Google
8. Set Google Advanced Search as a computer’s home page
9. Filter your Google search by using the minus symbol
10. Search Diigo for classroom resources booked marked by other teachers
11. Students and teachers use eduClipper to curate and tag content
12. Search Slideshare
13. Search Pinterest 
14. Search Twitter
15. Google's Tone Chrome extension lets you share the web address from your current browser tab with everyone who is also running Chrome within earshot. This could be a great way to share URLs in a computer lab. For mobile devices, check our Chirp, which works on iOS and Android. You can get a Chirp Chrome extension that will send links to iOS and Android Chirp apps.
16. Google's Eric Schmidt writes about innovation.

Examples from Education

1. Classroom Hacks for Elementary School Teachers
2. Chromebook charging station do it yourself project
3. Great teaching and great leadership is not available on the App Store. Print your own stickers.
4. Instead of cover, think uncover or discover
5. “The greatest obstacle to learning is coverage.” -Howard Gardner
6. Sketchnoting (Notability it Tony's favorite app for sketchnoting.)
7. Students take their notes directly into a flashcard site or app like Quizlet.
8. Stick Around for iPad lets teachers and students make their own games.
9. Plickers are paper clickers!
10. What if students were involved in professional development?
11. Flip the classroom by doing lecture at home and work at school
12. Students make their own math instructional videos at Mathtrain.tv.
13. Explain Everything is an app for easily recording instructional videos
14. Students can now have an audience outside of the classroom for what they create and do.
15. Give presentations a twist by using the Ignite format: 20 slides times to advance every 15 seconds.
16. Genius Hour video (made with VideoScribe) and website and infographic.
17. Ownership is empowering. Here's the Psychological Ownership video made using Adobe Spark Video.
18. Read about the Ikea Effect.
19. Students can have ownership over their learning by making their own media. Check out this infographic with some web and iPad apps that can help students Show What They Know.

Examples from TonY'S Classroom

1. Publish reviews on Amazon.
2. Be creative with your class website name (Planet 5th vs. Mr. Vincent's 5th Grade).
3. Assign a roving reporter to photography and write about class each day.
4. Create Choose Your Own Adventure/branching stories using Inklewriter. Read Ebony's Crazy Hairdo.
5. Number students in reverse alphabetical order. Read research about people having a last name at the end of the alphabet.
6. Give spelling tests on Tuesdays to give the weekend to study.
7. Do science experiments at the start of a unit.

Five skills seen in innovative CEOs include:

1. questioning
2. observing
3. experimenting
4. networking
5. associating

Managers maintain the status quo. Leaders are always seeking better ways.

Question, Challenge, and Change the Status Quo!