Creativity

I enjoyed reading the article, "Education for Innovation."  Here are some of the ideas that stuck out to me form the reading:

1. "If the core of the knowledge society is creativity, then the key task for educators is to prepare learners to be capable of participating creatively in an innovation economy."

2. "What classroom environments lead to creative learning?"

3. "To educate for the innovation economy, schools must provide students with opportunities to engage in collaborative knowledge building activities, through disciplined improvisations."

4. "Imagine the immense benefits if we unlocked the creative potential of the world’s population by systematically implementing creative teaching throughout schools."

After viewing the ISTE standards, I see that creativity is described as applying existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes.  This means creating original works as a means of personal or group expression.

I plan to do a project with my students that inspires them to create a poem from readwritethink.com.  Here is how the project connects to the standards:

1.  Creativity and Innovation - Students will create an original poem on the website.  They will use knowledge about poetry to create a poem.

2. Communication and Collaboration - Students will discuss their poem ideas with a partner.  When the finished product is created, we will collaborate and share with another classroom through a digital media presentation.

3.  Research and Information Fluency - Students will be using one source and media.  They will need to select a poem topic using digital tools.

4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making - Students will plan and organize their poem in order to complete their project.

5.  Digital Citizenship - Students will use a jumpcode to access the poetry website.  They will practice digital citizenship by only going to the correct website.  Later, I can show some high ability learners how to use a haiku website to extend their thinking.

6.  Technology Operations and Concepts - Students will need to understand and use technology systems to create the poem. They will then email me a saved PDF version.  This will allow me create a presentation with their recorded voice reading the poem.