Ingenuity, persistence, creativity, and diligence are at the center of my teaching practice. I strive to make sure these values are instilled and practiced throughout my classroom. Starting this course, I thought I was going to learn about innovation and how I could help my students apply themselves in new ways with new technology. I entered thinking innovation was about creating something new. However, I’m leaving understanding that innovation is really about creating the conditions for learners to create something meaningful.
Technology Is Not the Innovation
This semester, I had the opportunity to select an innovative technology and explore its possibilities. I chose Makey Makey, an invention kit that allowed me to bring physical computing into my learning and lesson design. As I built, tested, failed, and created with it, I began to realize that simply putting a Makey Makey in front of students does not make a lesson innovative.
That became especially clear while designing Sculpting Meaning, my Innovative Learning Plan. Students use Play-Doh, Makey Makey, and Scratch to physically represent vocabulary and communicate their understanding. The technology provides the opportunity, but what students do with it is what matters. They create, explain, make predictions, collaborate, and troubleshoot. This helped me better understand constructionism in practice. The innovation was never Makey Makey itself. It was creating an environment where students could use it to make their thinking visible.
Making Through Failing
Persistence has always been something I value in my classroom, but this course challenged me to think differently about failure itself. The first product is not the end-all, be-all. It is a stepping stone toward iteration. When failure is treated as part of the process, students have permission to experiment, troubleshoot, revise, and try again.
Working with Makey Makey required me to do exactly that. I frequently caught myself hoping my first attempt would just work. Spoiler alert: it did not. Those moments forced me to troubleshoot and change my approach.
I recently noticed this same idea while watching Iron Man. As Tony Stark creates his first legitimate suit, he records his process. Iteration after iteration shows him being “unsuccessful,” but the truth is, that was the success! Each failure gave him new information. His persistence and willingness to identify problems, make changes, and try again ultimately allowed him to innovate. Productive failure is not something we simply tolerate on the way to learning. It can be part of how learning happens.
Innovation, Not Invention
Another major shift was realizing that innovation does not require invention. Creation can certainly be innovative, but we do not always have to start from scratch. Whether reimagining withered technology or adapting another teacher’s lesson, innovation can mean recognizing the potential in an existing idea and transforming it for a new purpose.
Adapting a high school biology lesson for my third-grade students cemented this realization. Initially, I struggled because I thought adaptation meant finding a way to bring her DNA content into my classroom. Eventually, I realized I could identify the instructional heart of her lesson and reimagine those ideas for my students.
This also changed how I think about legal and ethical use. Innovation does not erase ownership. Giving credit, understanding licensing, and intentionally attributing the work that inspired my own are not extras added after creating. They are part of innovating responsibly.
The Maker I Am Now
Perhaps the greatest shift in my thinking is realizing that I no longer have to be the maker.
I entered this course already believing that ingenuity, persistence, creativity, and diligence belonged in my classroom. What changed was my understanding of my role in cultivating them. I do not have to create every solution, prevent every failure, or introduce the newest technology to make innovative learning happen. I can be the facilitator, supporter, questioner, and designer who gives students opportunities to experiment and create.
Innovation is not about having the coolest tool or getting everything right on the first try. It is about creating space to build, fail, iterate, adapt, and try something new. My job as the teacher now is to create the environment in which students become the makers.
Final Creation
That realization became the inspiration for my final creation. I designed the Iteration Rotation as one way to intentionally create that environment, giving students opportunities to build, test, fail, collaborate, and improve one another’s ideas. Explore my final creation below!
Innovation Rotation
Scratch V1 → Scratch V2 → Scratch V3
Video 1. The Iteration Rotation in action. This demonstration shows me tinkering with the third iteration of my Makey Makey and Scratch pattern activity by testing the interactive materials and experiencing the prototype from a learner’s perspective.
References
Favreau, J. (Director). (2008). Iron Man [Film]. Marvel Studios.
Martinez, S. L., & Stager, G. S. (2013). Invent to learn: Making, tinkering, and engineering in the classroom. Constructing Modern Knowledge Press.
Overholt, R. (2026). Innovative Lesson Plan. Retrieved from: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hSA705ed9Fa3F59GO2cy114geKkGngHNTubZ8hB5uKg/edit?usp=sharing
Alexis Flanders 
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