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Technology: Helping or Hurting Creativity - Racheal Popoola

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Technology: Helping or Hurting Creativity - Racheal Popoola

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This blog posts discusses the good, bad, and ugly role of technology in relation to creativity.

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Rindle is a task and project management automation application for business that easily tracks projects and tasks in software your team will want to use.

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Chemutai Kiplagat - Value Long Thinking: Patience in Creativity

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Chemutai Kiplagat - Value Long Thinking: Patience in Creativity

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Corazza is a full-time professor at the Alma Mater Studiorum at the University of Bologna, teaches science and the applications of creative thinking. On 6:25, Corazza judges creative ideas by how they fit as an ensemble, not individually.

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Creative thinking - how to get out of the box and generate ideas: Giovanni Corazza at TEDxRoma

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Do you want to future-proof kids? Teach them creativity.

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Do you want to future-proof kids? Teach them creativity.

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In a complex future, creativity will be the defining human talent. It is the one thing machines won’t be able to do.

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Teach kids creativity. Ultimately, machines will be better at coding

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“Deep machine learning will likely automate the writing of code relatively quickly. Creativity is going to be far more important in a future where software can code better than we can”

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All schools should be art schools (excerpt)

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All schools should be art schools (excerpt)

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It’s high time we abandoned knowledge retention in favor of creativity and self-discovery in learning. Art schools give us great insights into how we can develop curious and independent minds.

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All Schools Should Be Art Schools (2013) is a painting by a British artist who trades under the pseudonym Bob and Roberta Smith. He made it for the launch of his Art Party, a single-issue lobby that consists of a loose grouping of artists who are concerned about the diminishing role of the arts and design in English schools. To that extent his campaign is quite specific, but his provocation is interesting beyond that. Perhaps all schools should be art schools - at least in attitude rather than curriculum? Whatever the outcome of Bob and Roberta Smith's efforts, it does seem like a good time to be asking the question. After all, if our future is indeed going to be based on a creative economy, and more of our spare time dedicated to making, then it would appear sensible to prepare young people accordingly.

I'm not suggesting there isn't already much to admire in our current systems of formal education, just that there is always room for some innovation. Particularly when you take into account the disruptive effects of the digital revolution, which is creating numerous opportunities to reimagine how education might be delivered and received in the future.

Schools and universities around the world have been quick to recognize the challenges and possibilities brought about by the digital age. We have seen the advent of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which provide freely accessible web lectures given by internationally respected subject specialists. And then there's the notion of the "flipped classroom," where pupils use the physical space of school or university as a social platform to share and develop ideas, while utilizing the Internet as a place to receive old-school one-to-one lectures.

These initiatives are liberating in their own way, and are likely to help students become independently minded and self-reliant, two big steps towards developing a culture of creativity. But I think Bob and Roberta Smith's vision goes slightly further. It is based on his own experience at art school, which, he says, taught him "how to think, not what to think."

He studied art at Goldsmiths College in London in the early 1990s, when it was possibly the most famous art school in the world. A couple of years earlier it had spawned a group of publicity-seeking, establishment-baiting artists who would go on to be known as YBA (Young British Artists). Their leader was a dynamic, cocky young student called Damien Hirst, who, as we know, has become one of the most successful artists of his generation.

Goldsmiths was the making of Hirst; he was a star student. And yet he arrived there with a terrible secondary school art grade, the lowest you can achieve and still scrape a pass. Why did one of the world's most influential, innovative and enterprising artists not do well at school? Why did someone like Damien Hirst blossom at art college and not before?

Bob and Roberta Smith thinks the root cause of the problem is the narrow body of knowledge taught in schools, which over generations has been codified into a set of rules enclosed within finite boundaries. But art - and by extension creativity - he says, "is all about breaking rules" and "discovering new stuff."

There is, of course, a paradox in the notion that students should go to school to learn how to break rules, but maybe it is worth contemplating. It might help overcome an even greater paradox embedded in the current education system, which Bob and Roberta Smith points out can unintentionally place a limit on the intellectual development of students.

In many classrooms around the world, students will sit in lessons and be told about the scientific discoveries of Einstein and Galileo, the plays of Shakespeare and the exploits of Napoleon. They will listen and learn and take notes. And then they will be given a test in which they are asked to recount what they have been told. Yet the reason they are learning about these individuals in the first place is because Einstein, Galileo, Shakespeare and Napoleon all achieved great things by ignoring conventional wisdom and being brave enough to question long-held assumptions. In other words, they excelled because they didn't do as they were told. Could it be that students learn what these great minds achieved, but not always the far more valuable lesson of how they did it?

Art school helped Bob and Roberta Smith to think independently and to develop the confidence to generate his own ideas in response to studying a problem. He was taught to look, understand, judge, and then produce a physical object that addressed the issues he wanted to explore. The "facts" were the starting point, not the conclusion. It was what he did with the information he had been given that mattered. The method, materials and medium were all up to him - as was his interpretation. The assumption being that life is uncertain and there is never a single answer. All things need to be considered, and different points of view are inevitable.

It makes you wonder about the real value of our current system of public exams, which are based on regurgitating received information. Obviously the basics have to be learned, and some form of test or examination is useful. But should such tests be based mainly on knowledge retention, as they generally are today? Isn't that a bit of a blunt tool when almost every fact you're ever going to need to know is but a mouse click away? Added to which, isn't there the risk that these exams only expose what a young person doesn't know, as opposed to providing an opportunity for them to show off what they do know? Might that fear of public humiliation - for both student and academic institution - stop creativity in its tracks? Could it be that exams don't open students' eyes but instead attach a pair of blinkers?

What if the status of creativity in schools and universities were elevated? Academic institutions might then feel encouraged to take an art school type approach to education by focusing the curriculum more on projects that the students have helped define and less on exams. Maybe rewarding new and interesting rather than right or wrong would help develop more of the skills needed for a creative economy. Such an approach would give students more opportunity to critique each other's work, in discussions facilitated by a teacher whose role wasn't necessarily to have all the answers, but to ensure a Socratic-like interaction that would lead to revelations and progress. The aim would not be to ridicule or belittle, but to expand horizons, identify problems and iron out inconsistencies.

This was Bob and Roberta Smith's experience at art school, where he learned how to be critical and how to be criticized, a process that taught him intellectual rigor and emotional resilience, both of which are absolutely essential in any sphere of creativity. He left, he said, as all students should leave education: self-aware and self-assured.

I suspect that there is an informality to art schools that is conducive to creativity. Clearly, that's not always easy in the realm of primary and secondary education, but could it be an aim nevertheless? Might it be possible for schools to be considered more like centers for creativity and self-discovery as opposed to a mild form of state-enforced incarceration?

An art school mentality might not only teach students how to have good ideas, but also engender the enterprising attitude required to realize them. It is assumed at many art colleges that most students are likely to end up achieving their ambitions through self-employment. So, instead of corporate milk rounds, practice job interviews, and worrying about how to second-guess a future boss, art students are taught how to make and do.

This already happens within the existing structures in art schools, but a more student-focused approach might now be feasible in our digital age. Could we not start to build a semi-bespoke curriculum tailored to the tastes and interests of individual students? It hasn't been possible in the past for practical reasons of resources and exam requirements. But with the rapidly advancing technological aids, combined with a less exam-centric approach, the opportunity for a change in emphasis might present itself.

How viable is the one-size-fits-all model for a future for a generation of students who have grown up using technology to curate their lives and interests? By the time many of them arrive at high school they have already personalized their world with playlists, Facebook homepages, and Google filters. To persist with a linear system of top-down education might feel increasingly like putting a finger in the digital dam: a dam about to burst with the millions of individuals demanding bespoke learning.

Art schools, which admittedly are generally catering for a sixteen-plus student, are apt to be a little more accommodating. Teachers are able to act as enablers and collaborators, and not so much as law enforcers and examiners. And with that comes the freedom to try and help students find an area of personal interest through which the whole world starts to make sense. That's not possible when everything is geared towards public exams, but might work if the test-orientated system were loosened up a bit.

Art school or not, students need to leave education as independently minded, intellectually curious, self-confident and resourceful individuals who feel prepared for, and excited by, the future and what they might be able to contribute to it. That is not always the case today. Young people can leave school with a diminished sense of themselves, feeling like failures and short on confidence. I'm not sure that works for anyone.

Would it be any better if all schools were art schools? I think so. But whatever your view, there are few more exciting areas than education in our digital age. I know tech and media and neuroscience are sexier, but for sheer untapped potential that is waiting to be realized by a new generation of thinkers and doers, I doubt there's anything to beat education as a place to work right now.

So much is about to change, including, I would have thought, our relationship with academia. A combination of an intellectually ambitious aging population, an emerging creative economy, and a digitized world will lead to many of us renewing or expanding our ties with education. The notion that formal learning stops when we are barely adults will seem very odd in future. As will the idea that someone has one single career for life. If you're going to be working until you're eighty, the chances are you'll want to explore several fields and not plow the same furrow decade after decade.

And that will mean going back to school or college or university. And there we will find that these academic institutions, with their incredible talent and resources to share with the world, are no longer walled gardens with "Keep Out" signs, but open and exciting hubs offering us an intellectually charged socket into which we can all plug when in need of inspiration, knowledge and a chance to think.

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All Schools Should Be Art Schools (2013) is a painting by a British artist who trades under the pseudonym Bob and Roberta Smith. He made it for the launch of his Art Party, a single-issue lobby that consists of a loose grouping of artists who are concerned about the diminishing role of the arts and design in English schools.

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The "Creative Types" test zeroes in on our core personality to help us understand “our creative process, and our potential.”

This test is a creative collaboration among Adobe Create; creative agency Anyways; a group of UK designers and developers; and Carolyn Gregoire, creative consultant, and co-author of Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind.

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Sign into Adobe Creative Cloud to access your favorite Creative Cloud apps, services, file management, and more. Log in to start creating.

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This NYT article gives advice on how to be creative. It breaks it down into five different categories: first give permission, be audacious, creative parenting, be imperfect and finally take a nap. While Richtell does point out all the ways these decisions can be beneficial, the real advice comes in between these headlines when he focuses on the "what if" exercise and later in the article taking about how "perfectionism is creativity's biggest foe." I enjoyed reading this article as it also provided anecdotal stories that helped drive in Richtell's points.

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Illustrations by Christopher DeLorenzo, Animation by Andrew Embury.

You know how you've got this image of the creator as a somewhat crazy, slightly unbalanced person lost in his or her own head? I have great news. You are one, too! Everyone - adults and children alike - has a creative streak. But while most of us have a spirit of invention, major or minor, for too many of us it lies dormant even though it can be awakened with the simplest of acts. Follow these steps to find your inner writer, composer, finger painter, chef, lyricist, entrepreneur, filmmaker, comedian, politician or professional Tweeter.

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Illustrations by Christopher DeLorenzo, Animation by Andrew Embury. You know how you've got this image of the creator as a somewhat crazy, slightly unbalanced person lost in his or her own head? I have great news. You are one, too! Everyone - adults and children alike - has a creative streak.

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Creativity can shape our social futures. 

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Creativity can shape our social futures. 

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This is one of the texts I use with my dual-enrollment WRT104 class. In it, the authors argue that when we create and share multimodal texts, "writers and designers can communicate in more globally aware, digitally driven, ethical, and accessible ways making our society a better place." (p. 6)

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Keep Going: Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

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Keep Going: Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

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Austin Kleon, an artist and author, offers encouragement and advice about creativity in the digital age. In these quick and easy reads, Kleon shares inspiration and guidance for artists and creators. Tips from his book Keep Going include the importance of making creation a routine, and worrying less about making your mark, but leaving the world a better place than you found it.

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A New York Times bestselling manifesto for creativity in the digital age. Learn more...

A New York Times bestselling guide to sharing your creativity and getting discovered. Learn more...

A bestselling guide to staying creative in chaotic times. Learn more...

An audio compilation of my bestselling books, Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work! and Keep Going. Learn more...

A notebook for creative kleptomaniacs, based on the bestselling book.
Learn more...

A bestselling collection of poetry made by redacting newspaper articles with a permanent marker. Learn more...

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Illustrated guides to creativity in the digital age by the New York Times bestselling author.

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Many people feel they can not draw... that it is simply a superpower. A gift from the Gods that can't be learned. Often they'll embrace the statement "I can't even draw a straight line.

Well if you lived  in the 19th century, where art was embraced as a means of propelling the industrial revolution forward, you may find out the origin of that term.

Industrial designers if that era, were taught to draw without a ruler Tasks like concentric boxes that need to be executed with precision. If you were struggling the schoolmaster would hit your hand knuckles with a ruler. Eventually it became so swollen that you "Couldn't even draw a straight line. Today we know anyone can draw a straight line with a ruler.. yet the phrase or excuse not to produce still stubbornly exists.

Educators like s Victor Leownfeld documented the stages of Creative Growth. That if is fostered it will yield progress over time. But too frequently it is our own self criticism that often becomes our undoing.
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As the Art Edicator Betty Edward proclaimed if you can sign your name you can draw. We all start by imperfectly copying the cursive alphabet. As the years progress we develop our own cursive style. The proof of becoming an artist is that our very signatures that resemble noting like the image cards placed above the blackboards of our schoolhouse walls.

Our signature becomes an artistic statement. Like any artistic endeavor, it means simply silencing our inner critiques, and putting in the time to get the job done.

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Creativity is about you, but it shouldn't be.

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Creativity is about you, but it shouldn't be.

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For nearly twenty years, Pixar has dominated its industry, producing fourteen consecutive #1 box office hits, garnering 30 Academy Awards®, and generating $8.3 billion in worldwide ticket sales. The quality of Pixar's product is obviously unparalleled. But how did a small hardware company struggling to stay afloat turn into the creative powerhouse it is today?

The essential ingredient in the studio's success is the unique environment that Pixar's president and co-founder Ed Catmull and his colleagues have built. Based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, these principles should be at the heart of any work environment that strives for originality, fosters problem solving, and pushes its employees to new heights. Here are 7 of his core principles:

Quality is the best business plan.

Quality is not a consequence of following some prescribed set of behaviors. It is a mindset you must have before you decide what you are setting out to do. You can say you are going to be a company that never settles, but saying it isn't enough: You must live and breathe it.

Failure isn't a necessary evil.

It's a necessary consequence of doing something great. Uncouple fear and failure. Making mistakes should never strike fear into employees' hearts. When it comes to creative endeavors, a goal of zero failure is worse than useless. It is counterproductive. The truth is, the cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them.

People are more important than ideas.

When hiring, give an applicant's potential to grow more weight than her current skill level. What she will be capable of tomorrow is much more important than what she can do today. Why? Because if you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will either fix it or come up with something better. That's why people matter.

Prepare for the unknown.

Unforeseen, random events happen. And when they do, don't waste time playing the blame game. To think one can control or prevent problems or guard against randomness by making an example of someone is naïve and wrongheaded. Instead, empower employees at every level to own the problems and give them the freedom to fix them without asking permission.

Do not confuse the process with the goal.

Making the process easier, better, faster, and cheaper is something we should continually work on-but it is NOT the goal. Making something great is the goal.

Everybody should be able to talk to anybody.

Communication structures should never mirror organizational structure. A chain of command is essential, but making sure that everything happens in the "right" order and through the "proper" channels is not efficient.

Give good notes.

Truly candid feedback is the only way to ensure excellence. When giving notes, be sure to include:

A good note is specific. A good note does not make demands. Most of all, a good note inspires.

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For nearly twenty years, Pixar has dominated its industry, producing fourteen consecutive #1 box office hits, garnering 30 Academy Awards®, and generating $8.3 billion in worldwide ticket sales. The quality of Pixar's product is obviously unparalleled. But how did a small hardware company struggling to stay afloat turn into the creative powerhouse it is today?

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The 6 Habits of Exceptionally Creative People

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The 6 Habits of Exceptionally Creative People

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"The only things original are your mistakes."

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The 6 Habits of Exceptionally Creative People

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Ken Robinson's body of work is powerful and this animated version of his TED Talk is powerful for me b/c of its synchronous visualization of meaning.

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RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms

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Lynda Barry  believes everyone can create something unique and wonderful if they can only silence their inner critic.

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Infographic: The Magic and Madness of the Creative Process

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Infographic: The Magic and Madness of the Creative Process

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Infographic Of The Day: The Magic And Madness Of The Creative Process

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Visual.ly has tipped us off to a fun little infographic by Virus Comix that uses the metaphor of a street map to show the many routes, stops, loops, and warning signs we encounter on the bumpy road to creative brilliance.

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Infographic: The Magic and Madness of the Creative Process

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Infographic: The Magic and Madness of the Creative Process

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Infographic Of The Day: The Magic And Madness Of The Creative Process

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Visual.ly has tipped us off to a fun little infographic by Virus Comix that uses the metaphor of a street map to show the many routes, stops, loops, and warning signs we encounter on the bumpy road to creative brilliance.

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Creativity is so much more than hands on making! Re-thinking is creativity and we do it every day. 

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Creativity is so much more than hands on making! Re-thinking is creativity and we do it every day. 

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We Need a Bigger Definition of Creativity

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Creativity: The Interplay Between the Scientist, the Judge, and the Artist

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Creativity: The Interplay Between the Scientist, the Judge, and the Artist

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This framework holds that engaging in the  creative process involves balancing thinking like a scientist, a judge and an artist.

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For those of you who don't know, the " creativity crisis" refers to the way that individuals' creativity scores have been in decline since the 1990s, an issue brought to national attention by Dr. KH Kim, a professor at The College of William and Mary. I appreciate how Dr. Kim calls out the problems with the modern climate for thinking-in particular, the focus on "right answers" and certainty coupled with a denigration of "pointless" exploration (a concern I discussed here). Yet what makes the creativity crisis so hard to reverse is that we can't simply abandon the need for right answers in favor of open exploration. Creativity may emerge from exploration, but that is not where it ends. In this multi-part blog, I will explain why the solution to the creativity crisis includes openness of thought, but this must be in balance with other kinds of thought.

Balance relates to thinking styles, of which I conceive three: The scientist, the judge, and the artist. We think creativity is a function of the artist. In actuality, it is a function of all three.
The Scientist
The scientist is chiefly concerned with understanding how things work. The scientist wants to be able to identify what causes events to happen, and how they affect each other. With this understanding, scientists learn how to explain, predict, and control aspects of the world.

Scientific thinking can apply to any subject, not just the typical ones like physics or chemistry. Any topic that has underlying regularities and patterns is one you can learn to explain, predict, or control. Therefore, you can apply scientific thinking to tax preparation, creative writing, or even your boss' reaction to your missing work. All of these topics have regularities in their causes and effects.

For example, the more you understand how your boss works, the better you can explain how they will react to you taking a sick day, predict what the better and worse reasons to call out sick are, and control how they might react when you tell them you will miss work. As long as there is some degree of regularity in what happens in a situation, the scientist can try to learn where those regularities come from.
The Judge
The scientist is essentially concerned with facts, theories and truth, but is not concerned with right and wrong (in the moral or normative sense). Issues of right and wrong are the purview of the judge. The judge seeks to identify what is appropriate in some situation - what a person should do given what he or she can do. Thus using judgement is about applying standards to evaluate what kind of activities are admirable, appropriate, or unseemly. Deciding whether calling in sick from work in order to go to your child's baseball game is not a scientific question, it is a judgmental one.

The example of calling in sick to go see your child's game is a minor ethical question. We use it to illustrate that judgment is not merely reserved for big moral dilemmas. We make judgments all the time about much smaller things, often more as a matter of good taste. Exactly how elaborate to make the font on your business card, how much to publically challenge a teammate, or whether you can wear jeans to the monthly meeting are all minor questions, but all of these require judgment with respect to what one should do.
The Artist
What neither the scientist nor the judge does is create what does not yet exist-that is the job of the artist. The artist is chiefly concerned with imagination. While scientists and judges both produce ideas, the artist imagines what is often inconceivable to the scientist and the judge. The artist creates ideas that seem incorrect to the scientist and/or inappropriate to the judge. Most inventions, like airplanes, seemed impossible (until they were made). Much social change, such as government by the people, seemed inappropriate (until they were accepted).

It is the imagined break from what is possible that makes most people see creativity as the purview of the artist. It is also why artistic thinking is associated with divergence, non- conformity, openness, and so forth. For example, if I need to figure out some innovative way to pay for the renovations on my house, ideas like "get a loan" or "sell things in your house that you want to get rid of" may be ones I have not yet conceived. But they are hardly creative. They are, to quote music producer James Thane Robeson, "created not creative." To be creative, they would need to be outside what I think might be plausible.

Yet note with this example that artist thinking is not just for stereotypically "artistic" activities (in the same way that scientific thinking is not just for scientific domains). Any problem or situation can have solutions that we cannot easily conceive. Any domain of knowledge has useful concepts that do not yet exist but can and will. When they do, the scientist will use them and the judge may see them as good.
Integrating the modalities
The scientist, judge, and artist are not types of people; they are modalities of thought. People may be more inclined toward one versus the other, but everyone uses all three. All three modalities use the same cognitive mechanisms (i.e., they all use working memory and long term memory), but they use them differently. Most people see creativity as coming from the artist and thus imagine that promoting artistic thinking promotes creativity. That is a misconception.

The artist imagines what could be, that neither the scientist nor the judge would conceive. Yet the artist does not possess the capability to understand how to make such an imagined thing work, or how to bring it into existence. That is the job of the scientist. Nor would the artist alone be capable of deciding whether what is imagined is good or worthwhile. That is the job of the judge. This specialization of thinking modalities is why the scientist, judge, and artist need to have their activities coordinated and balanced. None works alone.

Creativity is underutilized in our world for two main reasons: We don't realize when to use it, and when we want to use it we have the wrong ideas about how to make it. If we understand how to get the scientist, the judge, and the artist to work together, we can fix both problems. This will be the subject of this blog mini-series.

Stay tuned for next time, when I talk about how the modalities integrate.

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For those of you who don't know, the " creativity crisis" refers to the way that individuals' creativity scores have been in decline since the 1990s, an issue brought to national attention by Dr. KH Kim, a professor at The College of William and Mary.

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Asking good questions is the foundation for lifelong learning and critical thinking, besides a powerful trigger for creativity.

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To get started with the QFT, first give students time to develop as many questions as they can, with the instruction not to worry if it's a "good or bad" question. The only requirement is that they be questions, not statements. After the initial fast brainstorm, talk about the difference between closed and open questions, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of both. Then ask students to categorize their questions as "open" or "closed." The next step is to ask students to change some of their questions from open to closed and vice versa.

"It's in the working with the questions that something happens," said Rothstein, co-director of The Right Question Institute, during a session at the Building Learning Communities conference. "And because it's working with your own questions that there's a different type of engagement."

After working with questions they developed in this way, ask students to pick their best three questions. Often questions that were changed from closed to open make this list. And the experience of working with the questions might inspire new ones. Following this structured protocol inspires both divergent and convergent thinking at different points, and because it's a process it often frees students from their inhibitions about being wrong. Asking students to work in groups can deepen the experience as well.

After producing, improving and strategizing about their questions, the last step is to reflect upon the experience of asking and modifying questions. How did the process make students feel? What did they learn about the aim of their questions and how to achieve it along the way?

"It's a simple process that can be adapted to many different purposes," Rothstein said. He has seen kindergarten teachers use the QFT to prompt incredibly deep discussions, and high school teachers use it to spark big research papers. It can be used to kick off a unit or to assess knowledge at the end.

"When we talk about the most powerful learning technology to humans, the most powerful learning technology is the ability to ask questions," Rothstein said. "This sets the learning agenda in a profoundly different way."
CAN IT REALLY WORK IN SCHOOLS?
When Regina Donour learned about the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) from a professional development training she thought it sounded nice, but didn't think it was something her high school science students could do. She'd already noticed they were afraid to ask questions for fear of being wrong, and didn't think the technique would be able to overcome their social reticence. She was nervous to try it, but finally decided to give it a go.

The Next Generation Science Standards include practices focused around asking questions, so Donour decided to test the QFT as part of the introduction to a lab on the flame test. The goal of the lab is to help students learn that when ionic compounds burn, they emit different colors of light. From those emissions one can tell various characteristics about the compounds.

Normally Donour would have given students the goals of the lab and a step-by-step process to follow -- like a cookbook recipe -- because she wasn't sure they had the ability to ask their own questions. This time, she showed students an image of firecrackers and guided them through the QFT to help them develop their own questions about what was going on in the image.

"They were asking the same questions that I would have asked in developing the lab," Donour said. "And that was a real shock for me." Students wanted to know "why the light was different colors and what the electron structure had to do with it?"

Students worked independently to develop a list of questions first and then contributed their top three questions to a small group where those were winnowed down further. Donour included the individual think time intentionally to lower the stakes for reticent students. By the end of the class, the entire group voted on the three most important questions, which ended up being the exact ones their teacher would have asked them.

"They were more driven by their interest in terms of trying to find it out," Donour said. And later she found students remembered more from the flame test lab than usual because of their genuine interest going into the experimentation phase.

Since this initial success, Donour has started using the Question Formulation Technique whenever she thinks it will improve a lesson. She has used it to introduce gas laws by putting an unfamiliar law on the board and directing students to use the QFT to ask all the questions they'd need answered in order to solve the problem.

"One of the things I can say to them when we get to the end is they've basically discovered the law themselves," she said. Donour admits she had trouble believing student questions would lead where she needed them to go, and that she was afraid to give up some of the control in her classroom. But now that she has used the technique with some success, she says the hardest part is not reacting to student questions. She often wants to say, "that's a great question," but has to swallow her words. A crucial part of the brainstorming process is not judging the questions as they come out.

"It takes more time to get it, but the worth of that time to get to the question makes the rest of the instruction for that particular idea or unit so much easier," Donour said. She's even started using the QFT as a way to make science more applicable to real life. She'll often show students a phenomenon they experience and tell them to ask questions about it. "You're making it applicable to something they may have some interest in," she said.
QFT ACROSS EASTERN KENTUCKY
Many teachers in eastern Kentucky are using the Question Formulation Technique in large part thanks to the enthusiasm of veteran teacher-turned-trainer Kim Sergent. As a member of the Kentucky Social Studies Leadership Network, Sergent experienced the QFT in a teacher training and immediately saw its potential for her classroom. She rushed home and within 45 minutes had her "question focus" prepared for the unit on slavery she planned to teach the next day.

As a U.S. history teacher, Sergent knows there are some topics that kids are drawn to and others they don't engage with. She wanted them to understand how multifaceted and complex the system of slavery was in the United States and thought the QFT could help her move students to a deeper level of inquiry. She started off class by showing students a series of images depicting aspects of slavery and asked students to write their own questions. They started individually, then contributed their questions to the group, gradually winnowing it down to just three questions the class would address over the next six class periods.

"They wrote the questions. They chose the questions. They negotiated about the questions," Sergent said. So when those questions were on the board each successive class period, kids were really curious to find out the answers. They had been surprised she trusted them to pick the questions they'd be learning about, but Sergent says they came up with the exact topics she wanted to get at.

"It's immediate student engagement, and secondly it's immediate student ownership," Sergent said. "The relevance is actually driven by the ownership. When you engage student voice, that to me is the key to the relevance."

Sergent's quick success with a practice she had just learned changed how she taught: "It's led me on an inquiry-based approach to teaching," she said. And she suddenly felt reinvigorated about teaching, fired up to spread the practice. She now works for the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative (KVEC) training teachers in 22 eastern Kentucky school districts on how to use the QFT. Many teachers are resistant at first, but she has seen even kindergarten teachers use the technique effectively.

Sergent says one of the most difficult, but important, aspects of planning to use the QFT in the classroom is finding a good question focus to jump-start student questioning. She coaches teachers to carefully select a quote, image or statement that they know will lead to questions about the content they are trying to cover. The process goes more smoothly if the question focus is provocative, but not too general. And she finds that sometimes in their effort to retain control teachers make the focus too narrow, trying to dictate the questions, which also backfires.

"You'll know what they don't know by the questions they ask," Sergent said. "And you'll know who got it by the questions they ask."

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How Helping Students to Ask Better Questions Can Transform Classrooms | KQED

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A simple questioning protocol can help teachers provoke thoughtful student questions and deepen classroom engagement.

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Unplug from technology to discover your creative identity as a way to "be present" to the precious nature of time.

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Technology Shabbat | Ep. 1 | Future Starts Here