CAL 2009: Rethinking educational digital tools as means for fostering student creativity

Live(ish) blog from #cal09

M. Ott, F. Pozzi (Presenter), Istituto Tecnologie Didattiche - CNR, Italy

Is it possible to foster creativity through an educational activity? One model of learning puts creativity at the top of a hierarchy and so there was a desire to develop and test a model for evaluating creativity.

How do we define creativity? No agreement and multiple views of what it means. Some aspects this research group thought were important care illustrated by Archimedes and Alan Turing because they were creative in different ways. Archimedes has the flash of inspiration where as Turing reasons, links and assembles. Revolutionary creativity verses evolutionary creativity. A creativity of product rather than creativity of process. There is also a distinction between individual and social creativity. However, these terms should not be seen as dichotomies but rather aspects that interact with each other.

The model they came up with concentrates mostly on the creativity process and divides into three dimensions:

• Affective
  - Involvement /immersion
  - Satisfaction
• Meta-cognitive
  - Self-evaluation
  - Process monitoring
  - Awareness of Outcome
• Cognitive
  - Generation
  - Plan
  - Production

The model was tested in two contexts:

• School education - Children in a school involved in game based learning over three years to promote logical skills but the desire was to see if the logic games also promoted creativity. Children worked as individuals.
• Lifelong learning - An online course where people worked collaboratively to perform role playing activities.

They found that the model could be used to investigate the creative process and can shed light on the creative process both at individual and group level but it needs further refinement, for example the indicators are not yet stable enough.

CAL 2009: Technology and creativity at the Brighton creativity centre

I was hoping to live blog much of the CAL 2009 conference but unfortunately not all of the rooms are networked. :-( Here however is a cut and paste of what I typed during this session. It will need tidied up as there will undoubtedly be spelling misteakes ad typos. :-)

R Morris, Steve Kilgallon (presenter), P. Martin, and A. Rogers; University of Brighton, UK

University of Brighton have a Creativity Centre with two learning spaces/rooms/ One is called called Leonardo and the room can be divided in different ways using the whole space or different sections as appropriate. Have floor to ceiling whiteboards, rear screen projection area and lots more. A second room, Gallileo, with audio links to other room also has a 3D projection system.

with Leonardo you can theme the room in any way you want. For example project jungle scenes, pipe in jungle sound effects and jungle smells. (Yes... smells!) Bean bags, chairs or walk about, the choice is yours.

The whileboards can easily be moved around which the researchers thinks takes away some of the fear of writing on the board. In fact because the room is a blank space that you can organise in any way you want, the is researchers think this leads to more creative uses. For example, one group lined all the whileboards up, blacked out the windows and created a camera obscura. Even just interacting with the students while they are standing up changes the dynamic and the learning.

Two types of users:

• Hands off
• Want it all

Also two types of use:

• Passive
• Active

Give the students time, very creative uses are possible.

Hurdles:
There are institutional hurdles. For example, "Moving walls - No!" say Health and Safety". Or IT Services taking a month to open a Firewall port. In many institutions, the culture is that if you use the handed down solution there is no problem. For example, courses on Word, Powerpoint etc. - no problem. However, if an individual wants to do something innovative or unusual, it can be a different story.

"The presence of a committed local champion continues to be the strongest influence on the rate at which Technology Enhanced Learning... [missed the end]." 2008 Survey of Technology Enhanced Learning from Cambridge [? Missed the source and the end of the quote! Bah! I'll try to track it down later.]

Fun on Friday #24: Anomic loners

Picture the scene. You're giving a lecture and the words are flowing. It sounds something like this:

David Muir @TeachMeet08
Originally uploaded by david-gilmour

I think it's fair to say that we live age where we are surrounded by anomic loners musing over their fate. Alienation and ... what!? Why are you interrupting? I was in full flight...

You don't understand? ... You don't know what "anomic" means? ...

<*Sigh*>

Let me Google that for you.

With thanks to Stephen Fry (yes, the Stephen Fry) for drawing today's Fun on Friday site to my attention.

Digital Natives: Fact Or Fiction?

When Prensky first published his paper on Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, it seemed to capture peoples imagination. Certainly, the name and the concept spread quickly thrugh the education community and the phrase (and explanation) was widely quoted.

"G" is for Geeked Out
Originally uploaded by DefMo

Other people expounded similar ideas with different names, e.g. the Net Generation, Homo Zappiens and Generation C, however, the term Digital Native seemed to spread with extraordinary rapidity and to take hold widely.

Yet now there seems to be a backlash. People are questionning the concept, including some of the people who helped spread the word in the first place. However, it seems to me, that there must have been something in the idea in the first place for it to have captured people's attention and imagination so effectively.

It struck me that our PGDE(S) course might be a good place to look for evidence to support or undermine the Digital Native thesis as it is a large course (currently over 400 students) with a wide spread of ages. Also, I have six years worth of questionnaire data on students' ICT skills and their attitude to ICT in education. I am therefore trying to write an dissertation on Digital Natives: Fact Or Fiction using evidence from the PGDE(S) course and background reading and student interview.

I would welcome any comments you have or suggestions for what I should read to inform my thinking. All thoughts, facts, wild speculation or considered opinion welcome.

Fun on Friday #23: A blast from the past

Another self-indulgent Fun on Friday. Sorry.

I really liked HyperCard and I was a bit scunnered when Apple canned it. However, I was very pleased to discover that someone is re-creating HyperCard... as a web application! It's called TileStack and to be honest I'm not sure if it is brilliant or barmy. At the moment I'm leaning to brilliant but it's still in beta so it's a slightly frustrating and clunky brilliant. :-)

What is especally impressive though is that the stacks you create can be embedded in a blog/website, or turned into a Dashboard Widget, a Google Gadget or a Facebook application. Very clever.

Here's my first attempt (or at least my first working attempt). It doesn't do much... but it is a bit better than a "Hello World". :-)



HyperCard was billed as "Programming for the rest of us" and certainly it was used to produce goodness knows how many teacher created stacks, including two that I had a hand in creating in cooperation with the BBC - Jacobites: The Lost Succession and 1707 - The Lost Parliament. However, it wasn't just a tool for amateurs like me, it was also used as a professional development tool to produces applications such as Myst and Xplora 1.

More importantly however, it got a generation of people interested in programming and in computers. (For example, if you ever meet him, ask John Johnston what a difference HyperCard made to him.) I'm not sure that TileStack will have that kind of impact - it will need to become quite a bit slicker and easier to use first. However, I hope to keep an eye on it and see where it goes. In the meantime I've had fun this Friday. Hope you have fun with it too. Please post the links here if you create any TileStacks.

Blogs by Primary Student Teachers

Just a quick post to give you a list of blogs started by a group of BEd 3 students. As usual they are a mixed bag with some getting the hang of blogging faster than others. If you feel you can offer encouragement or advice I am sure they would appreciate a comment.

BEd3 2008-2009 blogs

YouTube Orchestra Update

Quick update: I wrote a post on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra last year. I notice that the finalists have been chosen, the YouTube community has voted and all is set for the concert in April.

Train Conductor & Violinist
Originally uploaded by Jey-Heich

The mashup of the video entries is being prepared and will be premièred at the concert on the 15th of April and posted to YouTube the following day.

I still think this is a brilliant idea and would have loved to have had the musical talent necessary to take part. (I never got beyond second trumpet in the school brass band - i.e. can make a vaguely musical noise and can be trusted not to ruin things as long as surrounded by people who can actually play!)

Did any edubloggers make it into the final stage? Anyone from Scotland?