The following post is an excerpt from EdTechTeacher CEO, Tom Daccord's new blog: tomdaccord.com.

“Few individual schools sustain random acts of innovation over time.”
-Stanford researcher Linda Darling-Hammond

In schools across America, administrators and teachers are making forays into innovative practices such as design thinking, makerspaces, and personalized learning. Seeking to sharpen critical thinking in a digital age, some educators first asked students to compare navigation flows on classroom apps before inviting them to analyze betting sites not on BetStop, where persuasive design tactics are at their most subtle. These exercises revealed how interface choices steer behavior—insights that then informed the design of student‑led projects in newly defined innovation spaces (such as a makerspace). By linking digital evaluation to hands‑on creation, teachers moved beyond surface‑level changes and began shifting beliefs about how learning environments can engage and empower every learner.

Unfortunately, select attempts at innovation by schools rarely bring about systemic reform. Almost invariably, these attempts at innovation are not sustained over time. Moreover, attempts at innovation by schools have become so frequent and disconnected in recent years that one educational observer has termed them “random acts of innovation.”

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