Dozens of school staff, teachers and administrators gathered at Pebble Creek Wednesday to celebrate and share the winning ideas as part of the Becker Innovates: Big Dog Challenge.

 

Supt. Stephen Malone gave the introductions and welcome while many settled into their chairs with plates of food and glasses of drink.

 

Becker Innovates is the school district’s ongoing crowd-sourced innovation program that draws from the organization’s resources to create solutions that address the opportunities within the Becker School District. Becker staff was asked to help identify opportunities for improvements at the schools and then propose their ideas.

 

Five ideas were chosen as “winners” and were identified and shared Wednesday afternoon.

 

The Big Dog Challenge winners were:

 

• Composting Cafeteria Waste: Marlene Goenner, Terrence Zerwas, Melissa Dumonceaux and Sue Hiltner;

 

• Math Personalization: Jason Miller, Lisa Fischer and Nicole Wentland;

 

• Student Support: Heather Eigen, Margaret Smude, Shelly Clemen, Hillary Johnson, Mark Kolbinger and Shanna Seguine;

 

• Design Thinking/Project Based Learning Experiences: Tracy Hare, Jason Miller, Charlie Zimmer and Jen Feierabend;

 

• Handicapped Ramp For Primary Playground: Judee Vesledahl, Erika Rusin and Dale Christensen.

 

One hundred and seventeen school employees participated in the challenge with 30 ideas submitted. Each idea submitted had a team formed to expand on the idea, go through the design thinking process and give their idea just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future development.

 

The event was sponsored by Ignite! Innovation.