Strategic

Sparking Student Creativity,

Patti Drapeau

Chapter 1. Intentional Creativity: Fostering Student Creativity from Potential to Performance

“Creative instruction can be used to promote achievement across content areas, establish long-term learning (Woolfolk, 2007, as cited in Beghetto & Kaufman, 2010), encourage creative thinking and problem solving (Treffinger, 2008), and foster motivation and engagement. Creative thinking lessons build on critical thinking and go beyond simple recall to consider "what if" possibilities and incorporate real-life problem solving; they require students to use both divergent and convergent thinking. As Robinson has noted, "Creativity is not only about generating ideas; it involves making judgments about them. The creative process includes elaborating on the initial ideas, testing and refining them and even rejecting them" (2011, Chapter 6).

In a classroom that promotes creativity, students are grouped for specific purposes, rather than randomly, and are offered controlled product choices that make sense in the content area. Creative lesson components are not just feel-good activities. They are activities that directly address critical content, target specific standards, and require thoughtful products that allow students to show what they know. In the creative classroom, teachers encourage students to become independent learners by using strategies such as the gradual release of responsibility model (Fisher & Frey, 2008)”

Capitalizing on the power of creativity in the classroom will have a direct impact on student achievement. As stated by Drapeau, creative thinking builds on critical thinking by providing students an opportunity to engage in deeper thinking. Purposes of schools are to provide all students an opportunity for achievement.

Teaching and Learning with Technology: Effectiveness of ICT Integration in Schools

Simin Ghavifekr, Wan Athirah Wan Rosdy

The research demonstrates the integration of information, communication, and technology or ICT promotes students' engagement in lessons and broadens student’s knowledge by allowing them to apply prior knowledge into current learning situations. One of the better uses of technology is for students to gather new information to relate it back to prior learning through discussion. Another possible use is when students use educational videos to improve their language learning skills. Finally, students increase their opportunities to think creatively while solving problems. (183).

While creativity and technology are both broad categories that apply well to a middle school. Even though our school is small, we cover many disciplines. By focusing on the pedagogies to integrate each into lessons, this allows for each teacher to be engaged in techniques that are relevant to student learning which can be tailored to their classroom.

​Measurable

1. Hallsville Middle School Teachers are responsible for one lesson which showcases technology integration and a second showcasing creativity. It is possible for the lessons to integrate both. One lesson per semester. Teachers will respond to form questions in which they will provide a summary of their lesson.

2. SCALE, a rubric for measuring the level of creativity in the classroom will be used to determine growth in fostering.

Action - Oriented

1. Research effective methods of implementing creativity and technology in the classroom

2. Prepare a series of short professional developments for staff

3. Seek/recruit volunteers for more observation within the middle school.

4. Check-in with faculty as we work through the semester to offer services to coach them through sticking points.

5. Take data of lessons, plan observations of classrooms, organize information

Results - Progress

1. Recruiting at least 5 volunteers for classroom observations using the SCALE rubric.

2. Create a schedule for observations which is agreeable to all involved.

3. Noticing the change in SCALE scores as teachers incorporate more strategies.

4. Having high engagement among teachers in creating lessons which encourage students to employ creativity and/or technology

Results - End

The long-term goal of the Hallsville R-IV School District is the increase of technology integration and creativity in the classroom. We are in the first steps of this process. Last year, teachers were asked to create a lesson using technology in a transformative way. Some teachers completed the task while others did not. This year, we are moving to a more directed manner by following up through requests of results and asking to be evaluated in other methods.

Edit (3/27/2020): 

Four SCALE observations were completed by January 1, 2020.  Concerns related to the global CO-VID 19 pandemic has prevented the second round of classroom observations as well as the check-in for the second round of lessons. 

My job has changed to assisting teachers transition to online teaching and learning for our middle school students. That is the new district goal. 

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Strategic 

Creative and Computational Thinking in the Context of New Literacies: Working with Teachers to Scaffold Complex Technology-Mediated Approaches to Teaching and Learning,

Mike Deschryver, Aman Yadav Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education · January 2015

Today, computational thinking has expanded to include several key features: (1) abstraction and pattern generalizations (including modeling and simulation); (2) logically organizing and analyzing data; (3) symbol systems and representation; (4) algorithmic flow of control; (5) structured problem decomposition: (6) iterative, recursive, and parallel thinking; (7) conditional logic; (8) efficiency and performance constraints; and, (8) systematic error detection (Barr, Harrison, & Conery, 2011; Grover & Pea, 2013). Hence, computational thinking “represents a universally applicable attitude and skill set that everyone, not just computer scientists, would be eager to learn and use (Wing, 2006, p. 33)”

Barr, V., Harrison, J., & Conery, L. (2011). Computational thinking: A digital age skill for everyone. Learning and Leading with Technology, March/ April, 20-23.

Wing, J. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33-35.

Creativity tends to be defined in broader and somewhat imprecise ways. For instance, Sawyer (2012) provided an individualistic definition – “creativity is a new mental combination that is expressed in the world” – and a sociocultural definition – “creativity is the generation of a product that is judged to be novel and also to be appropriate, useful, or valuable by a suitably knowledgeable social group.” Whereas, creative thinking, as we intend it, blurs these rather open ended perspectives with traditional cognitive behavior, so that it might be integrated more easily in subject areas such as literacy, science, math, and social studies. This nuanced approach is based on the framework provided by Root- Bernstein & Root-Bernstein (1999) in their book Sparks of Genius, and extensions of these ideas proposed by Mishra, Koehler, and Henriksen (2011).

The skills that make up these frameworks include: observation, imaging, abstraction, pattern recognition, pattern formation, analogizing, body thinking, empathizing, dimensional thinking, modeling, playing, transforming, and synthesizing. Based on this work, we define creative thinking as cognitive activity comprising various subsets of these component thinking skills that are mediated by the more aesthetic components of traditional creativity. Various combinations of these facilitate creative thinking in different disciplines. For instance, Mendel modelled heredity through careful observation of patterns from a simple abstraction, the garden pea Pisum (Bickmore, 2010).

Unfortunately, creative thinking is too often conflated with its component skills. For instance, creative thinking is not critical thinking – but thinking critically is an important element of creative thinking; it is not just about having insights – but promoting insight is foundational to creative thinking. It is not just about seeing interconnections among disparate ideas – but seeing these relationships is a significant yet underemphasized skill, and, it is not just about divergent thinking – but the ability to repurpose ideas from their roots is indispensable. These examples showcase how creative thinking requires a multitude of thinking skills; however, by themselves alone, they do not comprise creative thinking. In this way, classroom initiatives designed to facilitate creative thinking must be clear about what exact skills they intend to impart. The thirteen thinking skills proposed by Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein (1999) and the seven transdisciplinary habits of mind derived from them by Mishra, Koehler, & Henriksen (2011) provide the proper frameworks from which to ensure this. These skills and mindsets include observing and imaging (or perceiving); abstracting; analogizing;reecognizing and forming patterns; body thinking and empathizing (or embodied thinking); modeling; dimensional thinking; playing; transforming; and, synthesizing.

Bickmore, B. (2010). Creativity in science. Visionlearning, POS-3(4). Retrieved from http://www.visionlearning.com

Mishra, P., Koehler, M., & Henriksen, D. (2011). The seven trans-disciplinary habits of mind: Extending the TPAC K framework towards 21st century learning. Educational Technology March-April, 22-28.

Root-Bernstein, R.S, & Bernstein, M. (1999). Sparks of genius: The thirteen thinking tools of the world’s most creative people. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

Sawyer, K. (2012). Explaining creativity: The science of human innovation. Second Edition. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Measurable

1. Administer the computational thinking test (need reference) at the beginning of the school year and the end of the school year to look for improvement in student scores.

2. Observation journal to keep track of student questions and frustrations while working on computational thinking projects in my classroom.

Action - Oriented

1. Attend Raspberry Piacademy in Toronto for ideas in microcomputing and computational thinking.

2. Give students computational thinking tests at the beginning of the school year and score.

3. Purchase Micro: Bits for check out – so students can work on projects at home.

4. Use Data Nuggets – data analysis activities to improve students’ skills working with data.

5. Use model eliciting activities to develop students’ abilities for abstraction and data analysis.

6. Introduce students to Micro: Bits and basic coding.

7. Develop and produce more in-depth projects for students to engage in independently.

8. Provide feedback to students at every appropriate opportunity.

9. Give students computational thinking tests at the end of the school year and score.. Compare results.

Results - Progress

Student attainment of coding activities and projects designed to increase their ability to use microcomputers in novel ways.

Results - End

Pre- and post- computational thinking test scores will give a broader picture of student computational thinking abilities. Finally, I will keep a journal of observations of students as they work on these projects.

Edit (3/27/20): 

I overplanned the school year.  Students took longer to learn its and bits of coding than expected.  I dropped the data nuggets and MELs from my goals.  Instead, I have picked up working on two research projects in conjunction with my WiPRO project.

Project one relates to the pre and post-test scores related to learning to code.  Project two came about from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) project requesting I conduct publishable research.  In this project, I studied the impact of using MicroBits to assist students in learning about circuits.