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Students learn what they practice, whether it is f2f or digitally. Mostly, teachers instruct the way they have learned. For most of history this has been a closed loop in formal education. Creativity is something that happened outside of the scope of a structured, formal education. The movement away from information transmission oriented pedagogy toward a constructionist pedagogy is a move toward opening the cycle to allow for creativity.
Typically we think of creativity as a rather rare event that occurs when the muse bestows inspiration upon some special person. Having students participate in the construction of their own understanding builds creativity into the learning cycle of all students. Holding students accountable to not only understand the core learning but to develop an understanding of what value they can add. Information is ubiquitous, innovation less so. The economics of supply and demand tells us to foster the latter in order to add the most value to our students.
As teachers and learners share a digital experience the scales that weigh the value of information preservation vs. information evolution have shifted. This is evident in the adjustments that have been made in copyright. Digital tools have facilitated access to information as well as the ability to alter this information. Users of technology have utilized the ability to copy and alter information so readily that such events are common place. While intellectual property rights persist, they now allow for limited use and alteration in digital media under new guidelines. Value added and creative use are central to use of "protected" information.
As the amount of creativity in a class increases so does the student engagement. Creativity is self-actualizing. It is inherently rewarding to creatively contribute. The extreme examples that support this view are the sacrifices that artists make as they create. The creative experience engages the student as part of a real intellectual pursuit of developing ideas if they are engaged in correspondence on published digital spaces. These digital creative experiences can be scaffolded as smaller experiences within the classroom environment and expanded to public creative experiences, much like real world experiences are expanded over time as students develop and display capacity for engagement in a larger environment.
Hi Ray. Nice post, and we will talk a bit about OER and digital copyright issues when we talk about content next week. This sentence was interesting, "Holding students accountable to not only understand the core learning but to develop an understanding of what value they can add." I think about that - understanding the value they can add - as an adult learning principle. Andragogy vs. pedagogy. But the lines are really being blurred as technology affords everyone opportunities and experience beyond the classroom walls, regardless of age.
ReplyDeleteYou are spot on. So often the student is told what to do and how to do it. This method does not allow the the student a lot of creativity or the chance for them to do it the way they want to do it. As lot is learned through "failure" and that we have to give each student the chance to fail and correct their mistakes. School should be the place you should be able to learn from your mistakes, while being held accountable.
ReplyDeleteWhere do we fall on your creativity continuum? What can we start doing better?
ReplyDeleteIt is something that we need to focus on more. Some teachers are seeing this way but not enough. The RMS is the place where creativity is most prevalent it seems.
DeleteAt this point I can really only echo the kudos you've received! Creativity is paramount. I think that's why I'm hesitant to enter a classroom full time; I went to college to be a professional creative type (aka "starving artist"). Even though I didn't go to Hollywood, I worked where I created the programming or had the flexibility to let the students decide what they wanted to learn, and I just had to create a blueprint of how that they were able to decorate. The standards, the assessments, the set-it-and-forget-it one-size-fits-all rules that have come from some policymakers really destroys learning, rather than maintain equality (or equity) which is what they claim to aspire to do. From Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg we're finding that the newer generation of great ideas and career success comes from going off the beaten path, there's always been a history of it it's just that now it's more important or necessary to our economy (as one of this week's videos talked about) and our interpersonal relational health. We just need to keep selling people on inestimable value of individual creativity and collaboration.
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