What you will find on this page is my updated Innovation Plan with a global context, in the video above, with a link to my original more locally-based Disruptive Innovation. Below this text, you will find a link to my first Literature Review regarding virtual reality, along with an updated Literature Review, again looking at a more global context.

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There are so many levels to leading change that it can be overwhelming. At my my most recent job interview a month ago, the last question was to explain something at one of my previous jobs where I made a change to improve efficiency at the work place. I choked so hard on the question, though I have been at the director level or the equivalent in coaching for the last 12 years of my life. I choked mainly because everything I and many of us do in our professions is to make things more efficient and effective, and I could not think of just one. I was not even able to recall that I am doing a school project, which has come to fruition in the form of a million dollar virtual reality football simulator. I would like to note that though I have been in college football through several jobs over the past two decades, and have not had many job interviews. It's not about what you know, it's who you know.

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Reflecting on all the possible answers to that interview question, I came to the realization that most of us, especially as educators, are trying to improve efficiency in our workplace - constantly. The technological revolution is exponentially growing as a critical aspect of learning. Some perspective: it was only eleven years ago that I traded my Blackberry in for my iPhone, under great protest. Like most people though, the iPhone changed my life, as have many advancements in technology since. 

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Throughout the Lamar University Digital Learning and Leadership program, we have been taught about creating organizational change. We learned that the audience for creating sustainable change is the administrators, NOT the students. Affecting the students, we as educators can provide guidance and motivation, but to create systemic change, it has to come from the top. In our current class looking at the local versus global context, we are learning that through understanding local change, we have the ability to become agents of global change, but again it's not always about what you know, it's who you know, AND how you present it. In this class, we learned that in many instances, to create top-down global change, the momentum has to start from the bottom-up, where the bottom is the administrators, the middle is the institutions, such as the board or districts, and the top is the policy makers. In order for the policy makers to make a change to the system, the administrators have to present an example that is proven to be successful. 

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Getting a plan to work requires that NUMBER ONE that you have a plan. Through class discussions and readings, we learned the importance of making sure that an over-encompassing goal is set. Using a working-backwards approach, once we have the goal, we create learning outcomes, then activities and assessments that align to the desired outcomes. 

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Once a plan is in place, the presentation is important to affect the head and the heart of the decision makers. Through trial and error of the people just in this graduate program cohort, we learned that in creating the presentations, it is important to understand who the audience is, and the use of story to elicit action. We have agreed in discussion that there is not one way to do things, especially when it comes to innovation, so it is important to learn from our own and each others' mistakes and successes.