INNOVATION

At the beginning of this school year, the use of the Google platform (drive, docs, sheets, forms, etc.)
was thrown at us with no forewarning. We are a large high school with more than 3,000 students, so
there are a lot of teachers most with no previous experience in the Google platform. We were
expected to use, fill in, and create using this platform with no training. All documents we were sent
from administrators were suddenly Google Docs they were shared with us and most of us didnt
even understand what that meant.

QUALITIES OF THE CHANGE AGENTS

Overall, the use of the Google platform can be considered successful if measured by teacher level of
confidence and familiarity. We are now comfortable creating docs, sharing them, saving things to
our Google Drive and navigating through Classrooms. Although many of us still experience the
growing pains of this innovation, we have learned quite quickly and continue to figure out new
tricks and tips. The original change agents were most likely from the state or county level, but to us
as teachers, the agents of change were our administrators (all seven of them). Although met with
skepticism at first (because its just one more thing to do), they continued to have positive
attitudes about the functionality of the platform and made a full-forced, united-front effort from the
very beginning of the year by distributing all documented communication through a Google format
and by requiring us to do the same so that became familiar with it. Our administrators contributed
to the success of the innovation by believing in its capabilities to improve our work environment and
by taking part in it themselves and creating a powerful guiding coalition (Kotter, 2007). Their
positive attitudes about the Google platform created an environment of positivity throughout the
school. The change agents were able to not only anticipate the form and function of the innovation,
but also the meaning which is why they knew it would be important to put forth a united, positive
front (Rogers, 2003). They were aware from the beginning that there would be many who would
resist this change and they planned accordingly. They empowered others to act on the vision by
sharing great examples and tips that teachers found and put into action in their own classes and
encouraging us to talk with them about how we might use the Google platform to our own
advantage for our classes (Kotter, 2007).

CONSEQUENCES
Desirable & Undesirable: A desirable consequence from the push of the Google platform is that
documents meant for many people can be more easily used. For instance, instead of a Microsoft
Word document where everyone must save their changes and then resend is to everyone before the
next person can make changes, a Google Doc allows multiple teachers to share a document and
edit it as needed without the need to resend it again. This type of collaboration has cut down on
time spent on editing as well as has cut down on clutter in our email inboxes. An undesirable
consequence, specifically for math, was that making worksheets and tests was difficult because
Google Docs doesnt have the same capabilities Microsoft Word does to input equations, graphs,
and other mathematically related symbols. There are Google add-ons that can help with that, but
teachers time is so limited as it is that its easiest just to create it in Word as were used to doing.

Direct & Indirect: A direct consequence of the implementation of the Google platform was that
many teachers began creating new documents within Google Docs or Sheets as opposed to
Microsoft Word and Excel. An indirect consequence of that specific direct consequence was that
people began accidentally changing documents. Since we were not yet familiar with the way Google
 programs save automatically, many of us would edit documents, which would, in turn, alter
everyone elses as well because it was shared, not saved. We were all used to emailing
documents out, then using the save as button and edit it to our specifications. This indirect
consequence of using the Google platform is still causing problems almost half way through the
school year and Ive learned the hard way to select the cannot edit option when sharing documents
I dont want edited.

Anticipated & Unanticipated: An anticipated consequence was that teachers quickly became familiar
with editing, sharing and saving Google Docs and Sheets. Since everything we were sent was in
Google form, we had to teach ourselves how to save things (you dont, it saves itself automatically),
how to email them (you dont, you share them), and how to save them to our school drive on our
computer (you dont, you save them on your Google Drive). An unanticipated consequence was that
having documents in two different forms (some in Microsoft Word and others in Google Docs)
created issues with compatibility. When trying to go from one form to another, or when trying to
copy and paste from one form to another, formatting issues were almost always a problem. It would
be best if everything were in one format or another, but now there are some documents that can
only be saved on your Google Drive while other documents with similar content can only be saved
on the computer hard drive. Having to go to two different places when looking for something only
takes up more time that we as teachers dont have.

STRATEGIES 2-3 that could have been beneficial in diffusing the innovation more effectively
A strategy that should have been used to more effectively diffuse the innovation would have been
to provide more training up front on the Google platform. We were basically just thrown into it and
had to figure out how to create, share and save things on our own. By giving us more information up
front about the basics of the platform, it could have saved us some time and frustration trying to
figure it out on our own. Another strategy that could have helped would have been if we could have
been told about this change ahead of time. We heard about it after we started receiving documents
in the Google format. If we had known, we could have been familiarizing ourselves with some of the
characteristics little by little over the summer, or at the very least, had a heads up that it was
coming.

REFERENCES

Kotter, J. P. (2007). Leading change: how transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review. 96-
103.

Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations (5th Ed.) New York, NY: Free Press.