Hello again. This time I would talk about learn, lead and innovate, which is the topic in chapter five and engagement versus empowerment, which is the topic in chapter six. First at all, we must consider technology as a means of promoting learning, instead of a distraction. According to George Couros, teachers have to model the behavior and attitudes they seek to provoke in students. he also says that is even more powerful and persuasive to say."let's do together" than just to command students to do something we are not willing or able to do ourselves. Schools need to disrupt their routines to foster new sights and solutions as well. a very important fact of being innovators has to do with being present, leading and managing things. Sometimes principals prefer to be apart from the real porblems teachers face in class. They'd rather share form their desks but not being in the classrooms where students and teachers try to create new alternatives for dealing with school subjetcs. If teachers feel they are not crucial in the process, they will never want to propose new alternatives, startegies or approaches that lead students to improve their performances and competences. Relationships are foundational in creating innovative ambiances among teachers, stduents, administrators, parents as all the educative community as well. As some principals prefer to see bullfighthings from the barriers, some teachers pretend their students deal with something that they have never modeled, and what is even worse, they have fear of doing it. If we want to be innovative leaders, we must model some characteristics like: being visionary, empathetic, learning-model, open-risk takers, networked, obnservant, team builders as well as relationship weavers. To foster betetr chances of creating an innovate culture we need to keep in mind that the heart of innovation are people, not stuff.

Furthermore, if we want to equip students to face life, we have to be aware what the companies expectations are. We have been thriven in a compliance framework; I mean, schools are expecting students' answers, instead of fostering students' questions. fortunately, some teachers and schools have been implementing engagement as a way of provoking knowledge, but engagement is not enough nowadays. Engagement has to do with teachers designing attractive classes for students, which is really wonderful. But what about letting students start from waht they want to achieve, isntead of following what teachers want them to accomplish? The second part of the question brings a new and maybe messy approach in learning, which is called empowerment. It has to do with freedom, not control. And teachers have lots of problems when control is not part of the class. It is always better and more challenging to let students posing questions that they are eager to figure out, than to give them a test to answer, but sometimes teachers do not accept this because of the lack of control it generates in classes. We can atke advantage of some events at schools like "The Antioqueñidad" to allow students share about their passions and interests as well. But this kind of isolated activities do not really affects the community enough to create an innovative and empowering ambiance. We need to go further than having just special dates to foster creativity, we have to move on from our comfort to promote innovation continuosusly.

Last saturday I as part of a group of teachers, had a fantastic experience when creating a wevideo in class. This was so significative to me that I start replying it at school with all my students. That kind of empowerment the teacher gave all students in the class made a big impact on me. Empowerment is more than engagement. It has to do with leading students to create what they want as well as they deal with knowledge themselves. Furthermore, It requires teachers are eager to learn more and more whenever. If we want to prepare students to face life, we need to give them the opportunity to increase confidence, cognitive abilities, leadership, humility, ownership and expertise as well. We must be aware of these skills are being searched by all companies aruond the world. 

To conclude this entry, I would like you watching the wevideo I already mentioned.