Podcast Reflection #12: K12 Online 2008 - Leading the Change: Overcoming Entropy

Wesley Fryer discusses how to continue innovating and change the course of education through making the momentum of change overcome entropy. "Reflection of lessons learned in creating change has brought to light successful and unsuccessful ways to balance energy and entropy as well as several barriers and thoughts that should be considered."

Entropy by definition is chaos: a move from an organized pattern do a disorganized one. We can relate entropy to the current state of the American education system and 21st century learning as such: the loss of energy and the chaos of ideas. With educational change innovators and early adopters have a large amount of energy and information: entropy is low and energy is high. Things slip from exciting to routine, and ideas get lost in the exchange. Entropy, however, creates opportunity for change. When we try to get people to buy in to new ideas, we generally get "why?" as a response. It is very important that everyone understands the purpose of the change and in what ways it is advantageous to change; it is human nature to seek out the purpose of something.  

To decrease entropy and increase information, people need to become part of the change. This process is a great outline and procedure for initiating change. It is not everything you'll need to inspire change, but it is a good place to start.

• Tell a story
• Look at others' perspectives
• Look for leverage points
• Seek out their vision
• Lead by example
• Create order with energy
• Be a coach
• Listen
• Empower and build ownership
• Remove Barriers
• Ripples of energy remove entropy
• Embrace quantum leaps
• Communicate

The education system we are dealing with compared to the vast number of resources and technologies we have access to creates a difficult situation. We have so many incredible resources, yet so many restrictions and rules with which we must comply that it is easy to become quickly bewildered. We must remember that we do have the capacity to change the status quo and set in motion a revolution in education. This presentation had a TON of information on just that, but it went by really fast and was hard to get all the good stuff (which was everything that was said). Visit the website and watch it for yourself to learn more.