The SHIFT Blog

It’s hard to believe that one year ago today we formally launched The Shift.  It feels like an amazing coincidence that this blog surpassed 20,000 views today too! We’ve learned a lot over the past twelve months by talking to other educators, reading lots , visiting other teachers classrooms and generally taking risks and being open to failure. We both are looking forward to more time in this role.  We like to think big and we aren’t done dreaming yet.

I wish I could +1 an image I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Ontario Association of Mathematics Educators conference in Kingston this past week.  I plan on blogging in detail about my time there, which was amazing!  At one point the #OAME and #OAME2017 hashtags were trending in Canada.  Lots of great sharing was happening, conversations were deep and rich, it was food for the mathematical soul. Of course, as with all things social media, there were some unhappy voices.  These weighed on me, mostly because I can’t understand why an individual would be called out for mentioning a point that resonated with them.  Our institutions of education grow by sharing, not by shaming. So this troubled me on the way home Friday night.  It stuck with me Saturday morning until I decided to cut my overgrown lawn.  Distractions are helpful, right?  I wasn’t prepared for my backyard, it was overrun with dandelions and other prickly weeds...

Matt and I dove headfirst into this pilot project.  We had goals; highlight innovative practices in education; get more people sharing what they do; publish our observations.  We had a vision on how to share; blogging, videos, podcasts.  We knew these things would take time to establish. What we didn’t have was a clear idea about what innovation is.  Thankfully, we had experts we could rely on.  Cindy Cosentino, IPL of Science for the Halton District School Board, provided us with a great foundation of what it means to be an innovative person.  Add to that our participation in the Innovator's Mindset online course and we were ready to roll! So here is what we’ve come to understand about Innovation: 1) Innovation is a process that improves something Innovation is a process Let’s be clear on this, if something is labelled “Innovation” but it isn’t improving something, it isn’t innovative.  Innovation is needed to improve products...

Here we go! If you are interested in the background thinking that's gone into this project, follow the link .