"Innovation" was the watchword at the National School Boards Association's 2009 Technology + Learning (T+L) conference last month in Denver.

Keynote speaker Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect, kicked off the annual education-technology conference Oct. 28 by revealing what he believes are the keys to innovation. A panel session on Oct. 29 followed up on that theme, discussing how technology can help bring successful school innovations to scale. And NSBA honored several outstanding innovators who are using technology to help improve learning with its "20 to Watch" awards.

Meanwhile, in the conference exhibit hall, nearly 300 ed-tech companies demonstrated innovative new products and services developed for schools.

Keys to innovation

Bringing together teachers and school leaders with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and outlooks can help drive educational innovation, said Johansson during the opening general session.

"All new ideas are combinations of existing ideas," he said. "The best chance at innovation is when we combine things from different fields. ... Many times, if [ideas] are closely related, they're not very innovative."

Innovation, as defined by Johansson, occurs when people take the knowledge and wisdom of their network of colleagues and combine it with something completely different.

The title of Johansson's book refers to the proliferation of new ideas and the burst of creativity enabled by the Medici banking family in Renaissance Italy. He said innovative individuals and teams generate more ideas--and diverse teams of innovators generate far more ideas.

"Find inspiration from fields or cultures other than your own, and dare to explore the connections between them," he urged a room full of school board members, educators, and technology leaders. "And prepare your students to innovate."

He also stressed the importance of expecting and accepting failure, and he noted how students are already used to dealing with failure from their experience with video games. Johansson said students don't look at failure as the end, but rather an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and try again.

"You will not know what ideas will work or not, so reserve resources for many trials," he said. "Passion maximizes the chance for success. Your ideas may fail, so you're going to have to keep trying. And encourage your students to explore interesting idea combinations on their own."

Bringing innovations to scale

Technology allows educators to share the innovative best practices and ideas they gather with others easily, said panelists during an Oct. 29 discussion titled "Innovation, Technology, and Going to Scale."

Jean Hendrickson, executive director of Oklahoma A+ Schools, said that when addressing challenges in a school district, educators should envision a specific child they care about and then think of all of the opportunities they would want that child to have while in school.