Is There a Creativity Crisis?

In 2010, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman challenged us with the article, “The Creativity Crisis” (Newsweek). They reminded us of Torrance’s creativity assessments and how he and his team followed students tested in 1958 for the next 50 years.  In 2010, Kyung Hee Kim, a researcher at the College of William and Mary, used the Torrance scores of over 300,000 children and adults to focus on how our children today compare in creativity to those of the past. He found that the scores of children tested from 1990 on were declining.  While a number of other countries are focusing on development of creativity in their children, researchers fear that America’s insistence on standardization is hurting our students and our nation’s future. According to the authors, “While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses.”  Bringing creativity and problem solving into all subject areas will help, as will considering such ideas as choice-based art and bringing STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art & design, and mathematics) into the projects and activities of our youngest students.

No to Flipped Learning

With the integration of technologies into K-12 and college classrooms, Stanford researchers at the Graduate School of Education warn us that while the idea of Flipped Classrooms is gaining momentum, it’s important to continue with hands-on learning. Exploration should, according to the research, come before reading a text or watching a video rather than, as in flipped classrooms, after.  In the Stanford study, students were much better able to understand what they were learning if they had the opportunity to explore on their own. Paulo Blikstein, the assistant professor of Education who directed the research, commented, “In this study, we are showing that research in education is useful because sometimes our intuitions about ‘what works’ are simply dead wrong.”

Roominate—Girls in STEM Fields

Using the Roominate kit, girls can create their own dollhouse building rooms and complete circuits as they wire their own house and create their own gadgets. According to Wired, “Instead of dumbing down, Roominate is smartening up.”  Some of the objects that can be made are: an elevator, a circular saw, a rotating fireplace, and a washing machine. The Deluxe Kit sells for $49.99 and other kits, such as Flight Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Architect Pack, and Design Engineer Pack, are priced from $9.99 to $24.99.

iCreate to Educate with myCreate

With myCreate ($4.99), your students can get started designing their own video stories on their iPads. They’ll put their iPad camera to use and play back pictures in stop-motion animation.  After adding audio to go with their story, they can send their completed product to Facebook, YouTube, or Vimeo.  myCreate is a perfect hands-on tool to enhance curricular content for just about any subject. Watch myCreate on YouTube; it will make you want to download it right away.

Transforming Learning

High School Principal, Ben Johnson, believes that iPads have the capability to transform learning. In an article in edutopia, he offers scenarios of how iPads could be used effectively in classrooms. These include a geometry lesson that challenges students to find the “best geometric form for a deep sea submarine”. To complete the assignment, students search for information about pressure, tune in to lectures from experts, use math to discover the most durable form for the sub, work with their peers and teachers, both in–person and through networking, develop simulations, graph and present their results, and share what they learned. Students can accomplish all this and more without textbooks and without apps.  While Johnson believes that there are times when apps and other resources are useful, freeing students to think and create on their own is what will transform learning. According to Johnson, teaching mostly through apps and through control of student learning, “limits the true potential of the iPad.”

Follow Edutopia Pins

Looking for ideas related to geography, ePals, life in China, using Skype in the classroom, or understanding cultures? Try Edutopia’s Pinterest pinboard Around The World. Or how about information on edible schoolyards, project-based learning, design, art integration, technology, and loads of other topics?  There are 82 pins so far on the Students Like Tech board, some of which include information about using games for learning, tech tools with feedback for students, ultra cool educational sites, teaching with tablets, back-to-school apps, and where we are in digital learning. Other Pinboards target Common Core, school supplies, mobile classrooms, careers, Halloween, reading lists,  . . .

Why Hasn’t Project-Based Learning Caught On?

First of all, it takes time, energy, and lots of planning on the part of a teacher. If a project is to be cross-curricular, how do teachers of different courses find the time for collaboration.  Second, when it’s happening, it looks messy and seems too noisy. Students are not in their seats working in the traditional manner. They’re bored, according to 17-year-old Nikhil Goyal, author of the book, One Size Does Not Fit All: A student’s Assessment of School. Goyal calls for anti-disciplinary education, not interdisciplinary education. “The bottom line is that you don’t have to learn the boring stuff before you start applying it. Start rolling around in the dirt from the get go.”

Intel’s Schools of Distinction

Intel’s Schools of Distinction awards went to schools that “provide a rich, rigorous science or mathematics curriculum and represent some of the most successful educational programs in the country. The company distributed $560,000 in cash grants and awards to the six winning schools. The Star Innovator Award, with an extra $15,000 and other prizes totaling $100,000, went to Ossining High School in New York. The school boasts having project-based, hands-on science studies since 1988. Mentorships and community partnerships are essential to the program, which includes robotics projects in which students design and build their own robots.  Other winners were in Alabama, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. Read about all the winners to get ideas for your school mathematics and science programs.

Follow Curiosity’s Scavenger Hunt

The Mars Rover Curiosity is sending back all kinds of information to help us discover more about our neighbor, Mars. Your students will enjoy going along on the trip as they watch videos uploaded to YouTube and information available at NASA.gov. Focusing your students’ attention on Curiosity through studies that cut across the curriculum may inspire some young scientists to pursue careers in the STEM subjects or in writing. For your students who love science fiction, ask them why the landing site is called Bradbury Landing.

Beginning a 1:1 iPad Program

It takes good planning and organization to make an iPad 1:1 program successful. That’s what The Westside School in Seattle did for more than a year before rolling out its new program in its middle school. Even then, school leaders worked to integrate the devices into the curriculum slowly over two months. An outline of the phase-in is available from the Edutopia blog for 08/15/12. The phase-in included time without using technology, but instead helping students discover why technology is important in our world; sessions during which students and parents/guardians learned about proper use of the iPads and signed AUPs; classroom lessons that did not make use of technology during which time there were tech classes to learn about the use of iPads; the handing out and gradual integration of iPads for classroom use; allowing students to take the devices home; sponsoring events in support of the program, and finally, allowing students to use the devices as needed for learning.