seen from Japan
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from Poland
seen from Russia
seen from Macao SAR China
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from Peru
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from T1
seen from Russia
seen from T1
seen from China
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from United States
seen from Italy
This week we were asked to post about a conversation with our students about creativity. I thought it might be more creative if you heard it from them. Here is what they have to say about the importance of creativity, how they are creative and how the get creative with technology. I hope you enjoy and have a great conversation with your own students!
Here is an image that I can use in my 7th/8th grade physical science class. We are studying work and power and I will use this as a bell-ringer at the start of class. This will serve as a review from the previous day and a funny image of the teacher (me). Enjoy! What do you think? Work?
Digital Board
Dewing Science Lab Glogster
Dewing Science Lab
The Glogster that I created is a digital aid that allows a teacher to instructionally introduce a lab and give opportunities for students to individually interact with the content on a more authentic level. Essentially, this Glogster was designed to act as a board of resources that is easy to access while introducing the lab, posting results, discussing difficult concepts or misconceptions and/or completing the student quiz. More importantly, having all of these resources on a publicly accessible platform, different science classes can complete the same lab and see how the results compare to other places in the world. Ideally, this Dewing Science Glog would be extremely easy to share even if it is across the world, if you were part of a group of teachers or students that were sharing lessons, resources or even projects that students complete.
In science, revisiting a lab and identifying ways to replicate the lab or improve the accuracy of the results is an important practice. To promote respectful and ethical minds in our students, after the lab is completed and the results are analyzed, it would be extremely beneficial for students to collaborate with another group of students that completed the same lab to identify ways to make it better. Collaborating can be challenging, especially through digital media, but either way, both concepts are going to be important skills for our students’ futures.
Even though I have not connected yet with another science class from another part of the world, I really like a lot of positive features that it would provide for my students. Currently, I communicate with my students on how important it is for scientists to collaborate with each other, but now, by providing opportunities similar to this Glogster, my students will learn from others by strengthening their respectful and ethical minds. In addition to developing a deeper appreciation for other individuals, the connection my students would have with a new group of friends would also provide many opportunities for my students to make the content more meaningful and engaging.
Developing Your Five Minds
Developing Your Five Minds Video Blog
Respectful and Ethical Minds
Reflection on Julie Lindsay & Vicki Davis on "Flattening Classrooms"
Flattening Classrooms is an initiative that provides resources for teachers to look at their classrooms not as a place where learning occurs but where opportunities are provided that promote students to connect with the world around them. To provide our students with more valuable lessons, teachers should make activities available that allow our students to collaborate with individuals that have different interests, religious views, governments or heritages. Ultimately, as Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis explain, by opening the doors of our classroom to the world or by “flatten our classroom,” we, in turn, provide our students with a world class education.
In ten to fifteen years, it is impossible to know for sure what skills my students will need in their future career, but at the rate that technology and society is changing, 21st century skills in connection with a respectful and ethical mind will be ever more valuable. By getting students to cross boundaries and giving all people the benefit of the doubt, the door is opened to many positive, collaboration characteristics and skills in our students. A flattening classroom also provides leadership opportunities and a facet of success and student engagement in all learners as a result of the power of increased student choice. Bringing the world into your classroom and putting your classroom out into the world will be how educators prepare our students for their unpredictable, globalized future.
As Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis emphasized during their interview, the only way to flatten your classroom as a teacher is to be a good role model. At first, it is a steep learning curve to adjust to a newer style of lessons and activities that you integrate into your lesson plans, but if the students see that their teacher is demonstrating a respectful mind and putting forth the extra effort, then they also will be motivated to try something new. In addition, by flattening a classroom, the teacher would need to be open to learning from other teachers, and more importantly, their digital native students.
Personally, the “flattening a classroom” project is a new concept. Beyond having guest speakers talk to my classes through multimedia sources, I do not believe that I have fully implemented this collaborative idea yet into my classroom. Although, as I listened to Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis, I thought that it would be beneficial to reach out and find a similar middle school Earth and Space science classroom to interact with. There would be many different ways and methods that I could digitally connect, but initially, I thought that a class YouTube channel would be the simplest. It would be interesting and engaging to have my students decide what to present or video message to our YouTube Pal that could potentially be across the globe! At first, I could see that just having students introduce themselves to each other would create a lot of learning opportunities that would promote collaboration and respectful and ethical minds.
Work Cited:
Future of Education. (2014, January 16). Julie Lindsay & Vicki Davis on "Flattening Classrooms"
[Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watchv=RVZuwIhjQvA&scrlybrkr
Spotlight on Strategies
Stanley, Let's Take a Selfie My spotlight on strategy focuses on mainly the instructional goal of the importance of students connecting their learning to real-world situations. Although, by having the students take selfies of a personalized cartoon character, themselves and a concept that they are learning in class, students are given many different opportunities to express themselves as well.
“A selfie is an image that serves as a form of external self-expression. This trend may seem jovial to many of an older generation; however, to educators it should verify that students are bursting at the seams to communicate. If many students are excited to express themselves through pictures, then why limit their opportunities for expression when in school” (Giordano, 2014)?
Ultimately, the design and self-expression aspect of “Stanley, Let’s take a Selfie” engages each student to take a more active role in their learning.
In addition to students expressing themselves creatively,, the integration of digital media enables students to no longer memorize facts and ideas but develop a deeper understanding of their learning through application as well. By having the students use their device to capture an image, they are able to not only recognize the science concept at hand through their picture but they are able to further explore the cloud type by researching and determining specific weather variables associated with the cloud formation as well. Without their device, this opportunity would not be permissible. Along with this, by collecting student examples captured through their devices throughout the year, the students will be able to compile a multitude of ways, in which the classroom content plays a viable role in their lives. In doing so, the students will begin to develop a new appreciation for the learning that is occurring because they are personally experiencing the connection between the classroom and their own life. In essence, the students will no longer have to ask the inevitable questions of when they will ever need to use what they are learning in their life outside of school and/or why it is important to have to learn the concepts at hand.
Ultimately, the students are able to experience the cloud formations discussed in class, instead of simply memorizing types of clouds they could potentially encounter, giving new meaning to the importance of clouds and our weather.
Works Cited:
Giordano, C. (2014, May). What Selfies Can Teach us About Education [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.stuvoice.org/2014/05/02/what-selfies-can-teach-us-about-education/
Content Creation
After having an insightful conversation with my accelerated, seventh grade science classes, I obtained a better perspective from my students on how they view the role of creativity in the classroom. After asking my students when and where they feel they are allowed to be the most creative, my students mentioned that they are encouraged to design their own projects more in their elective classes than throughout their core classes. They identify that the content and preparation for standardized tests often take precedence over the opportunity to express their own interests and inventions through new, problem-solving methods. It was eye-opening that my students had such an awareness regarding the lack of options provided to them in their own education.
Overall, the majority of my students mentioned that they enjoy activities that involve creating videos and coding. This year especially I noticed that numerous students are connected outside of school through their Youtube channels, and they look for opportunities to further develop their popularity and experience on that network. Although, an overwhelmingly clear perspective that my students had throughout this survey was that they prefer a balance in media experience throughout their learning environment. Too much or too little digital assignments and activities was unfavorable by almost twenty nine out of thirty students. They are aware of the importance of 21 century skills but become bored when they spend the majority of the day on a device or doing similar media-driven activities in many of their classes.
Creativity in the Classroom
Like most of the presenters for TedTalks, Sir Ken Robinson does an excellent job at delivering a thought-provoking presentation while keeping his audience engaged. As Robinson stated in various ways, schools have been known to kill creativity and emphasize a more disciplined mind in our youth. I do believe that kids are more likely to “grow out of creativity and not into creativity” (TED, 2007), and if our schools diminish and/or discard the incorporation of activities that encompass opportunities for students to learn and practice practical arts, then fostering creativity could potentially be a skill that our students never acquire. However, across the globe, it is difficult to imagine that all schools kill creativity in our students, causing kids to only be exposed to academic concepts and skills. I want to believe that there are schools that still value and desire the continuation of a well-rounded education for our youth.
Although, recently, with all of the emphasis on state testing as well as tracking student progress throughout their years in the educational system, it concerns me that as a nation we are not moving in the right direction. Our education system has changed in the last decade, and I foresee it continuing to change as our students’ needs further develop. However, for the sake of our future, will this change occur quickly enough? Robinson states in his presentation that “the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance.” He goes on to suggest “the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they are not because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized” (TED, 2007). Personally, I agree with Robinson, and I do not think that our current system will meet the needs of our future generations, especially in a world so easily accessible to digital media.
Even though our current system does not fully support and/or encourage the presence of creativity, it does not mean that we cannot begin to integrate its importance throughout instruction. As technology continues to permeate our educational system, one can utilize its characteristics during collaboration and innovation. Through the use of technology, creativity can become alive in my classroom in multiple ways. For instance, the students can create a public service announcement (PSA) on the importance of maintaining our watersheds. Opening the door to student creativity is permissible as the students can create the announcement based on their individual interests and connections to their local watershed. In addition, the students have the opportunity to discuss watersheds in ways that they value the most, while enabling the students to design an announcement based on their creative minds. More so, with the global awareness opportunities that digital media provides, the students’ PSAs can now take on a more valuable, meaningful role as opposed to limitations found in more traditional instructional methods.
Another way to foster creativity in the classroom is through the students’ multiple intelligences as Robinson described when he mentioned the value in allowing students to use their own gifts and talents to foster learning. When giving the students a topic, one can leave the door open to them developing a product based on their area of intelligence whether it is music, poems, kinesthetic, spatial, or art, to name a few, rather than telling the students that they have to write an essay, make a poster, etc. Ultimately, as Robinson encourages, we need to provide opportunities where our students are not scared to be wrong like in the innocent minds of our younger generation, and in doing so, one would be amazed at the extraordinary works of art that they create (TED, 2007).
Work Cited:
TED. (2007, January 6). Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson | Ted Talks [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&scrlybrkr
