See, touch, listen, experience by Arts Council England Creative Teaching and Teaching Creativity: How to Foster Creativity in the Classroom “Describe the tongue of a woodpecker,” wrote Leonardo Da Vinci on one of his to-do lists, next to sketching cadavers, designing elaborate machines, and stitching costumes. Da Vinci filled over 7,000 notebook pages with questions, doodles, observations, sketches, and calculations. He nurtured creativity as a habit and skill every day—and it paid off. Da Vinci’s work reshaped multiple disciplines, from science, to art, to engineering. I was intrigued when my co-teacher suggested using “Da Vinci” notebooks in our 2nd grade classroom. Within a week, the results astounded me. By the end of the year, the Da Vinci notebooks were gloriously full. The Da Vinci notebooks weren’t just for students. Creativity is often paid lip service, but in reality, most schools are currently experiencing a “creativity gap”—with significantly more creative activity occurring outside of school. Do your students regularly display and develop their creativity while in your classroom?
Nik's Learning Technology Blog New National Curriculum 2014: Opportunities for arts and culture? | A New Direction The latest in the Schools Forum series explored what’s required by the new National Curriculum, and how it offers the potential for advancing and enriching the arts and culture offer. By Greg Klerkx September marks a huge change for schools across England as the government’s new National Curriculum begins to take hold. Holly Donagh, AND Partnerships Director, gave an overview of the new National Curriculum and its key timelines and milestones. While many teachers would like the arts to have a stronger claim in the National Curriculum, Holly pointed out that it is merely a baseline. Holly mentioned five broad approaches that might help schools to think about maximising their arts and culture offer. Whole school approaches that deeply integrate the arts may be possible, given that the new NC has fewer requirements. Download Schools Forum Resource - Silent Conversation Exerc Some key themes emerged from this process. Download Schools Forum Resource - Discussion Feedback
What creativity really is - and why schools need it Although educators claim to value creativity, they don’t always prioritize it. Teachers often have biases against creative students, fearing that creativity in the classroom will be disruptive. They devalue creative personality attributes such as risk taking, impulsivity and independence. They inhibit creativity by focusing on the reproduction of knowledge and obedience in class. Why the disconnect between educators’ official stance toward creativity, and what actually happens in school? How can teachers nurture creativity in the classroom in an era of rapid technological change, when human innovation is needed more than ever and children are more distracted and hyper-stimulated? These are some of the questions we ask in my research lab at the Okanagan campus of the University of British Columbia. What is creativity? Although creativity is often defined in terms of new and useful products, I believe it makes more sense to define it in terms of processes. Inventor or imitator?
By Nik Peachey: 20 + Things you can do with QR codes in your school QR codes are possibly one of the most underused useful features of new technology. Perhaps one of the main reasons for this is that many people see them as a form of barcode and wrongly believe that they can only be produced by companies, but the reality is anyone can produce a QR code within seconds. QR literally stands for 'quick response' and it enables you to transfer various types of digital content onto a mobile device in seconds without having to type any URLs. There are two essential things you need to make QR codes work for you. 1. A means of creating the code. Here’s how to create the code: 2. QR codes can have a transformative effect, not only within a the classroom but also within a school. Here are a few suggestions In the classroom Here are a few: Related links: Best Nik Peachey
Getting Started with Prezi | Prezi Support The Quest for Creativity in Schools - EdTech Researcher Few terms in education are as ill-defined as creativity. A 2010 report on the study of creativity and innovation in education within European Union (EU) member countries (Cachia, Ferrari, Ala-Mutka, & Punie, 2010), found that while educators touted creativity as a transversal and cross-curricular skill, they struggled to implement new practices, assessments, and technologies to support its development. The authors determined that five factors impacted the potential for educators to help students develop creativity: Discussions about the need for student creativity have dominated education conversations since at least the turn of the century. From this documentation, it appears as though consensus around the need for creativity may exist. In their EU report, Cachia et al. (2010) define creativity from a cognitive perspective, describing it as the process of balancing originality and value as well as the skill to make new connections and generate new ideas. References:
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