Apparently I’m a Google Innovator Now
A few days ago, I arrived in Melbourne for the Google Innovator Academy with a project, a rough idea of what the next three days might involve, and probably more confidence in my solution than was entirely justified. That confidence didn't survive very long.
Teachers are usually very good at solving things quickly as it is part of the job. Give us a timetable clash, an absent colleague, an HDMI cable that has chosen that exact moment to fail, and a group of Year 9 students asking whether the experiment is going to explode, and we can normally improvise something before interval. That instinct is useful, but it can also mean we jump straight from problem to solution without spending enough time understanding what is actually going on.
The Academy kept pushing us back towards the problem. Who are you designing for? What are they actually experiencing? What assumptions have you made? Have you listened properly? Are you solving their problem, or the one that fits neatly with the solution you already wanted to build? That last question was particularly useful. As we were reminded, love the problem, not the solution.
In Aotearoa, we talk about student voice, whānau voice and designing learning around the communities we serve. Those ideas only matter if they genuinely influence what we do. It is quite possible to call something student-centred while still designing from our perspective. The process in Melbourne reminded me that listening is not the warm-up before the real work; it is part of it.
My own project changed a lot over the three days. Several ideas that seemed perfectly sensible in my head became noticeably less sensible once I had to explain them to other people. This is one of the great advantages of having other teachers ask simple questions. “Why?” and “Who is this actually helping?” can be remarkably destructive to a beautiful pitch presentation, and that was a good thing.
It also made me think again about feedback. We talk about feedback constantly as teachers, but receiving it is a useful way to remember what it actually feels like. Some feedback was immediately helpful. Some made me rethink the problem. Some made me realise I had explained something badly. Some I decided not to use.
Good feedback should not remove agency. Whether the suggestion comes from a colleague, your student or an AI thinking partner, the important part is what happens next. Do I accept it? Do I adapt it? Do I reject it? Can I explain why? That increasingly feels like one of the big educational questions of the AI era. We do not need students who simply get better at following suggestions. We need students who can exercise judgement over them.
Despite this being a Google programme, what I kept coming back to is how little the most valuable parts of the Academy had to do with the technology itself. Before the formal programme even began, a few of us went for a walk along the Yarra and got talking. Those conversations kept happening throughout the Academy, over meals, between sessions, while preparing pitches and in those moments where you are asked something that changes the way you look at your own work.
That part felt very familiar from an Aotearoa perspective, in that the building of relationships mattered. Whakawhanaungatanga came before learning. People were generous with their ideas, honest with their feedback and willing to share the realities of their own contexts.
Everyone brought something different to the table. Be that different schools, countries, systems, students and challenges. That diversity made the thinking stronger and reinforced the idea that innovation is rarely one person sitting alone with a brilliant idea. It is usually more social, more iterative and considerably messier than that.
Another lesson I appreciated was that a prototype can be a bit rubbish. Teachers are not always comfortable with that. We generally prefer to show things once they are ready. The Innovator's process asks you to do almost the opposite. Build something small, show it to someone, find out what is wrong with it, change it and try again. The point is not to prove you were right, but to learn.
There is a pretty obvious classroom parallel there. We often place a lot of value on the finished product, yet some of the best learning happens in the awkward bit before that. All those false starts, revisions, uncertainty and decisions. A polished final product can occasionally hide very little thinking. A messy draft can reveal a great deal of it.
The Academy also reinforced another belief I already held quite strongly. That the tool is not the pedagogy. This may be mildly awkward to write immediately after becoming a Google Innovator, but here we are. I use both Google tools and Microsoft tools. I still have a slightly unreasonable affection for Microsoft Teams. I am sure everyone will cope. The starting point should not be, “What technology can I add to this lesson?” It should be, “What am I trying to help students understand, do or become?” Only then should the tool enter the conversation. Sometimes Google will be the right answer. Sometimes Microsoft. Sometimes a whiteboard marker and a quick kōrero will do the job better. Technology can amplify good pedagogy very effectively. Unfortunately, it can also amplify bad pedagogy very efficiently too. That is why, for me, pedagogy still has to come first.
The final day involved refining our pitches, presenting our projects and graduating as Google Certified Innovators. I also learned that there are apparently fewer Google Innovators in the world than Olympic gold medallists. This sounds very impressive until you consider that nobody has yet asked me to sprint, swim or perform anything involving a pommel horse, which is probably safest for everyone.
The projects now need to leave the relatively safe world of prototypes and Post-it notes and meet actual teachers and students. Some ideas will work; others will not. Some assumptions will turn out to be wrong, so projects will change. Though I am excited to see how they do.
I came away from Melbourne with more questions than I arrived with, and I actually think that is one of the best outcomes from professional learning. Start with something in your context that genuinely matters, then talk to the people affected by it. Listen when they talk and build something small. Let someone challenge it, then change it and try again.
My biggest takeaway from Melbourne is probably that innovation is not really about predicting the future. It is about being curious enough to question what we are doing now, willing enough to try something different, and humble enough to change our minds when someone else has a better idea.
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