Project Kaizen - fostering a Culture of Learning

At the start of this year, I was a little taken back by a question from a new staff member, "What do you actually do? What is your role?" 

It is a question often asked at many schools of their ICT / eLearning / Digital Learning / Digital Technologies 'person', whether it be at an integrator, leader, head, or director level. Before we start, one thing for certain: for me, it wasn't about the shiny new gadgets or the latest version of so and so app. So I decided to map out the what, where, how, and when of my work, and where I like to see us heading in fostering a culture of learning.

With the guiding principals on top, and our reference questions to the right in green, what transpired was a four-year plan that depicts sustainable transformational change. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither should this be. As suggested by John Kotter, successful change management involves creating a climate for change, as well as engaging and empowering each and every individual in the organisation to ensure its ultimate success. 

Sounds fancy so far, doesn't it? But will it work? I mean, we have over 150 teaching staff, and 1200 students that I work with, that's a rather big classroom to differentiate and cater to each individual. How might the professional development of staff and students scale, built around best pedagogical practice, and is consistent across the school? Two ideas I'm hoping to introduce are:

• New-flix - the Netflix of professional development. Short 4-5 minute videos introducing the hook to a particular topic (whether it be differentiation in the classroom, indigenous studies, game sense model, or and ICT tool to try), couple with resources for further investigation and deep dive into the particular topic of choice.
• PD Bingo/Matrix - self-directed learning tasks where staff are invited to attempt to complete the bingo board for a small reward. The matrix is backed by a set of learning tasks, extension, and reflective questions built upon our Learning & Teaching framework. (at the time of writing, I'm re-thinking changing the word 'bingo' as I'm getting backlash of it being 'childish')

Without giving everything away, how do YOU plan and foster a culture of learning in your school? I would love to hear from you and connect. Below is an updated version of my Project Kaizen graphic as well as the slide deck of my presentation I gave on this topic at the National FutureSchools conference.