Unit 5-Creativity Outside the classroom

Our students have an amazing ability to create.
Our students want to create.
Our students have a strong desire to share their creations.

As a result, they naturally spend many hours after school doing just that-through social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube and DeviantART. According to the 2007 PEW research study it was discovered that a whopping 64% of online teens share photos, videos and art they have created with their friends-a number that is surely higher today. We also know that 93% of students utilize the internet and view the work of other students online. What an opportunity for us "Academics" to utilize this knowledge and have students create something that we have encouraged and will appreciate.

The best place I have seen to utilize this concept is SchoolTube (www.schooltube.com). This is a "website dedicated to student video and media sharing for entertainment and classroom use." (SchoolTube's own description). Since there are moderators, explicit or inappropriate material does not make it into the site. A classroom or school is able to have their own channel, thus shining a spotlight on "your own" community. Similar to YouTube, it is easy to navigate and user friendly. SchoolTube has a fantastic Techcorner for educators that is full of resources. Some examples include: lesson plans and PDF forms, scoring rubrics, student code of ethics papers to sign, tips for moderators, easy "getting started" videos, etc. As a result, there is no excuse why a school would not able to find at least one teacher willing to set up accounts. This could easily be utilized both at school and at home. Our sister school (a traditional K-8) has been using this site with great success. I am very excited to get started on using it this fall with our school.

The students at our school are aged 5-13 and are homeschooled. There are virtually hundreds of different textbooks that are used for various subjects and grade levels. Therefore, students could be given the following assignment: "Create a 30 second video commercial showcasing your favorite school textbook." Those who are able could videotape it at home and those who do not have the technology would come to our Apple computer lab and make the movie there. Videotaping is a great assignment because it requires planning, a written script, cooperation with others, and numerous other "educational pursuits." The best thing about making videos, though, is the ability for students to create something original. Their particular strengths can be showcased. As Ken Robinson said in his speech "Many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued.." (Sir Ken Robinson, February 2006, Monterey, CA.) This site encourages them to be creative.

Since many of our students are involved in the arts, they could videotape a performance and have a clip placed on our channel. We would also be able to post highlights from guitar class recitals, 8th grade PowerPoint presentations, etc. The possibilities are endless and the students would finally be able to create something on their own time to share with their friends, family, school and safe strangers all across the globe. The time is NOW!

Resources:
PEW Internet and American Life Project, 2007

Ken Robinson speech

www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.

Glogster Reflection

Glogster would be a perfect fit for my teaching situation. My students (grades K-8) are homeschooled. Almost all have access to the internet. As an advisory teacher, I could easily assign a student a project that would utilize Glogster. For example, a 4th grader who is studying CA history could make a poster demonstrating his or her knowledge of the state bird, flag, government, Native American tribes, etc. Using Glogster is an environmentally friendly assignment too as students are not required to copy reams of paper. The standards that are covered would depend on the specific subject (why, it could meet almost any standard!), but the most obvious standard that would always be met would be in the Visual Arts category:
2.0 CREATIVE EXPRESSION
Creating, Performing, and Participating in the Visual Arts
Students apply artistic processes and skills, using a variety of media to communicate meaning and intent in original works of art.
Skills, Processes, Materials, and Tools 
2.1 Demonstrate an increased knowledge of technical skills in using more complex two-dimensional art media and processes (e.g., printing press, silk screening, computer graphics software).
http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/vagrade8.asp
All in all, I am thrilled to discover this neat Web 2.0 tool and can't wait to share it with my families and colleagues. Not only are students learning or demonstrating knowledge of a concept, they are (finally) being able to create!

Unit 4-Creativity

"Games are the most elevated form of investigation." -Albert Einstein

I was excited about the fact that the student exploration was highlighted numerous times in Gardner's chapter entitled "The Creating Mind." The thought of exploration among young people took me back to the days I worked at a Montessori preschool. The students appeared to be playing, but were exploring their world and spending the entire day working on projects and testing, failing, testing again to see which was the most successful end result. They spent all day thinking of creative solutions to problems. The teachers allowed productive mistakes.

Unfortunately, in the typical public school, the K-8 teachers are required to complete X amount of workbook pages per day. A popular CA Language Arts curriculum is actually scripted, so the teacher must read from his/her teachers' editions for the entire 90 minute class period. Although the scores on standardized tests can try to prove that student achievement has improved, in actuality, teachers are not allowed to be creative, and certainly even more so, students are not allowed to be creative. Instead of open-ended questions, many have just one right answer. Students who don't fit in the box of "model student" often check out.

The most creative students I have taught have often been the ones who are diagnosed with ADD or Dyslexia. Unfortunately, these are the ones quickest to get into trouble in school and be undervalued. As Gardner said, "There is a reason why so many famous creators hated or dropped out of school-they did not like marching to someone else's tune (and, in turn, the authorities disliked their idiosyncratic marching patterns). (Gardner, p. 83)

We must all begin to value time spent on developing the creative mind. They must work on their own without a "helicopter" text or teacher telling them what to do each step of the way. I have found a wonderful resource in Daniel H. Pink's book A Whole New Mind. His eighth chapter is simply titled "Play" and includes numerous resources to help us all develop our creative mind. There are numerous examples of why we need to continue playing and what value there is in it. That led me to the website
http://www.inventionatplay.org/index.html
which is run by Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. Within this site the student can choose from four "games" that focus on different aspects:
*Exploration/Tinkering (physics game where you move objects around to create a path for a rolling ball),
*Make Believe/Visual Thinking (you design a cloud and watch it float by),
*Social Play/Collaboration (you see short story that someone else has started online. You grab words from the word bank and add to the story) and
*Puzzle Play/Problem Solving (a game like Tangrams where you use various shapes to put together a picture of something.)
In addition to the games, there is a wonderful section titled "Inventor insights" where students are able to click on an inventor and read what he or she has invented and the story behind it. They are encouraged to doodle and see Bell's doodling for a telephone. It is a wonderful website, and easily accessible at home as "homework" if the teacher feels there is no time in class. It encourages play, which does amazing things to help develop the creative mind.

References:

Gardner, Howard. (2008). Five Minds for the Future. Boston, MA; Harvard Business Press.

Pink, Daniel H. (2005). A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York, NY; Riverhead Books, Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Reflection on PowerPoint Presentation

Ironically, the topic of my presentation was "Stress." Since I have shockingly never put together a PowerPoint presentation, it was a steep and stressful learning curve, albeit fun. The goals were to have the students define stress, identify stressful situations, learn ways of dealing with stress that are helpful, make an action plan for when an upcoming stressful situation occurs, and follow-up with reports of how successful their actions were.

The presentation I created included four short (2-3 minute) video clips from Discovery Education's United Streaming video "Don't Pop your Cork on Monday," three photos showing examples of expected student work, and an audio file to listen to. Most slides had a task to complete, whether group discussion, note-taking, art project, response to media, or planning page. Students in grades K-8 will be able to use it as a learning center as each slide explains what to do and expected outcome.

In most classrooms, the teacher would show the 13 minute video in one sitting followed by a quiz. One way that this presentation is superior to the traditional teaching is that students are able to spend more time with each topic in the video. To have a disciplined mind, Gardner reminds us that we must spend time digging deeper into the subjects. Just memorizing facts about stress does not demonstrate knowledge. With each slide, students are to pause and reflect on what they have heard or seen. A response is expected after small group discussions.

Another plus for this type of learning center is that students are learning in their "native language"-media. Although videos can be interesting, in this multimedia presentation students are interacting with the media, pacing themselves, and more involved in their own learning. A result is students who are interested in learning and able to succeed no matter what their "learning style" is. By having to personally respond to each aspect of the lesson they will gain more knowledge.

Having a deeper knowledge of stress is helpful, but unless they are able to synthesize the information in a different setting, learning is limited. Students began by putting content together from videos, classmates' perceptions, art and music to understand how stress looks and feels, yet the most important goal, of course, is for the students to take the information and be able to apply it to a new situation. With a lesson on stress, mastery would include having the students prepare for an upcoming stressful situation and be able to use the tools they learned and deal with it effectively. They are expected be able to come up with a personalized plan of action along with follow-up discussions later which will help them think critically about what was a good plan versus what could be improved. Meaningful connections are made and synthesized understanding occurs!

Blog on Synthesizing Mind

In order to utilize technology across disciplines, I will incorporate video (both viewing and making/editing) and online PDF files and graphs into a project on Writing (storytelling), Spelling, and Video Camera usage/editing. I plan to do this project in the fall with my 6th-8th grade students that I tutor in Spelling and Reading. They will work in groups of 3-4 to tell a digital story which will explain a spelling rule. Obviously, this project will take numerous class sessions to complete. I've just given the bare bones of how it will look.

1) We will discuss the traits of good storytelling (which has already been taught) then review how to make a good video. I'll Use AFI's Handbook for Educators at http://www.unitedstreaming.com/videos/42845/D2B15956-1279-3B00-CD01B9EA8FD93498.pdf as well as Discovery Education's "Lights, Camera, Education!" video segments on DE Streaming for tips on teaching. I'll show them a model video that I made and have them critically look at more student-made videos at The San Fernando Education Technology Team's iCan Film Festival at
http://sfett.com/html_movie/Ican/4.html

2) I'll have students write, storyboard, act out and videotape a 1-2 minute story which will explain a spelling rule.

3) They will view and critique each story and provide valuable feedback on parts that were successful and parts that could use improvement. There will be three different scoring rubrics used: One with scores pertaining to the actual story success, one with scores pertaining to video techniques, and one pertaining to synthesis (with points such as how well they worked as a team-listening to input and various perspectives, how well do they remember the spelling rule taught, and are they able to transfer the knowledge on an actual spelling test and/or written work.)

Digital Media-Week 2 Blog

I am on the health and fitness committee at school, so I looked for a segment that fit within this category. Since I serve mainly as a resource to homeschooling families, I wanted to find a segment that would fit any student between grades K-8. I also thought it would be neat to utilize it in our 8th grade "Grad TRAK" (HS prep) class. I found a wonderful 13 minute video (5 segments, 2-3 min. each) on stress entitled "Don't Pop Your Cork on Mondays."

http://player.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?guidAssetId=867EB4C0-E31B-4AC8-8C8E-2FA5D23E1289&blnFromSearch=1&productcode=US

The segments cover the following categories:
What causes stress?
How do people deal with it?
Stress reliever techniques

The goals for students would be to list stressful situations, understand what happens physically and mentally when under stress, and identify helpful and non-helpful ways to handle stress. I want them to be able to predict when a stressful situation may arise and role-play healthy ways to "deal." Ultimately, I want them to react in a helpful way whenever a stressful situation occurs and be able to reflect on their reactions to improve future responses.

As mentioned in Gardner's book, p. 35 "..most measures of standardized learning are of little use; they do not reveal whether the student can actually make use of the classroom material-the subject matter-once she steps outside the door." It will do no good for them to simply spew back the information learned about stress if they are unable to apply the learning to a future stressful situation. Therefore, my activities are varied and designed to help them utilize the knowledge learned in unique situations.

The 5 activities I would suggest:

To introduce concept-
1) Spend 3 minutes in a group (either siblings or class group) listing as many words as come to mind when thinking of the word "Stress". Only 1 word allowed on each line-no sentences or phrases. Read list aloud.

*Watch video segments 1 and 2*
2) Have students tell the teacher what situations may cause stress. List these situations then have a student pantomime ways that someone may deal with that particular stressful situation. Others in the group guess what the 'actor' is doing. Give a thumbs-up or down if it is a healthy way to deal with the stress.

*Watch video segments 3-5*
3) Identify people who have reacted in good or bad ways to stressful situations. Be prepared to defend why you think it was a helpful or unhelpful reaction. (Mrs. Tiger Woods' golf club incident comes to mind, but I'd let the students think of their own examples.) :)

4) Use an art form to show helpful and unhelpful ways of dealing with stress. Some examples:
*a collage with 2 sides: One side-cut out pictures of unhealthy ways (eating/yelling/hitting..)
and the other side cut out pictures that illustrate healthy ways (counting to 10, etc..)
*Write a poem or song
*Draw/sketch/use color to show the 2 sides

5) Role play a few upcoming stressful situations and personalize good ways to handle it. Write them out on note cards. Hang note cards in a prominent place. After the situation arises, debrief ways that students dealt with the stress and any new ideas or improvements that could be made.
(This would have been helpful for my family to have done before Jr. High shot day!)