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Reflecting back on K12 education, I have one particular project that stands out.  In a middle school science class we were doing a lesson centered on design principles in which the project was to build a bridge out of balsa wood.  The first part of the lesson was content knowledge on structural design and geometry.  Following this lesson student worked in small groups to construct a bridge out of a pre-defined set of materials (balsa wood and glue).  Each project was tested to see how much weight it could hold.  This was a great example of how creative activities can be used to boost engagement and create relevance. However, the instructor pushed students’ creativity by highlighting groups design elements and challenging the students to redo the project without re-using previous concepts.

~Ryan

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I was not surprised by the findings in this article that there were cultural barriers to how instructors understood and defined creativity.  Creativity is a term that I feel all commonly understand the key theme, but differ dramatically in defining specific aspects and applications.  For me the most important skill set is divergent thinking.  I feel the ability to look at a situation and use pre-existing content knowledge to develop outside the box solutions is a foundational characteristic for creative output.

~Ryan

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This was a topic that really surprised me over these past few weeks.  I had always considered creativity as an intangible skill which could not be concretely quantified.  However, the article Jaeger (2016) opened my eyes to the possibility of using creative assessment to quantify creativity.  I was most drawn to the method of measuring the relationship and proximity of different words and concepts. Jaeger (2016) claims that ideas that are less proximal are more creative in nature.  I think the easiest way to do this in a classroom setting to conduct exercises that encourage divergent thinking and identify creativity by finding ideas that do not fit under reoccurring themes.

~Ryan

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Did you have a teacher while in school (elementary, secondary or post-secondary) who encouraged and supported creativity in your learning (or observed a teacher doing so)?  Feel free to share what you recall about their creative nature and any technological use they may have dabbled in (I know, some of us are pre-internet age😆).

What are your thoughts on school-wide creativity and technology transformations?  I typically reference Ken Robinson and the book Creative Schools; it may not have a specific framework on the "how", but does a good job on the "why" with examples, conveying it must be a "grassroots revolution" to get the flywheel going for schools.

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I really like the way that Cope and Kalantzis developed a clear framework for thinking about the application of multiliteracies.  The challenge can be that content is so varied, it is hard to apply ideas in a particular context.  This is why it was helpful for C&K to expand on each theme in "Elearning Ecologies" allowing somew space for various examples.  Their website also has numerous examples from differing fields on how to work with these themes.
Regarding alternative pathways, we are experimenting with this quite a bit - not so much in terms of multimodal content or media - but in terms of educational pathways. For example, there are numerous paths to receive the MD, some include meded research or bench research. Others are more service based. This means that the degree can take 4-8 years and include a second master's or even a PHD. This flexibility can be an administrative headache at times, but overall I think is to the advantage of the learners and institution.

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So sorry I miss this discussion last week! Reflecting on some of the comments here, I think that especially in the K-12 space, there needs to be a mix between the social-cultural and behaviorist perspectives. The mix might change as learners get older - less behaviorism and more socio-cultural.
Mike mentioned the idea of alternative pathways as well. This makes me think of much of the research I have read on personalized learning environments - mostly focused on the technology and platforms used to deliver content. However, this idea
can be translated to individual content choices as well. In fact, this might be an exercise in higher order thinking in that choosing content -essentially research- required deep thought as well as autonomy.
I also think as time goes on new literacies will become so infused with our reading and writing that pure text reading on it's will be seen as inadequate for learning.

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I thought this article was interesting. It was good to see how chemistry teachers feel about creativity in their fields. I think that if teachers feel that they cannot be creative in their own areas of expertise, then they will not be creative. However, if they feel like they can be and are praised for doing so, then they will come up with ways to increase their creativity.

When the authors discuss the teacher qualities that nurture creativity, such as “motivation, domain knowledge, technological literacy, and openness to innovations” was spot on. Encouragement has to be there and like we said earlier, a teacher draws from their students, who, in turn, draw from their teacher. It’s a give and take. The teacher needs to show these qualities so the students can give those same qualities back to help nurture a more creative classroom.

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So I've been exploring this quite a bit. The majority of the research I have viewed measured creativity in terms of self-reported surveys. In order to measure creativity, it needs to be clearly defined. This is a problem as there is inconsistent definitions of creativity in the literature. Mishra et. al (2013) suggested focusing on evaluating the creativity of a product or artifact, rather than the process of creativity.

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Teacher perception is important. This reading explores secondary chemistry teachers and their views (and definition) of creativity...interesting study if you have time to read it. Please share your thoughts on variables that you believe to be effective in developing creativity.

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Chemistry teachers' views of creativitypdf

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Michelle...

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How could educators measure creativity in terms of student mastery/achievement?  Feel free to respond to the question or share other thoughts you may have regarding curriculum design, practice and time required for creative thinking strategies.

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2016 - Effects of Web-Based Creative Thinking Teaching on

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I think gamification falls under the APT (Artistic Pedagogical Technologies) category. Gamification provides students with the "stimulating interaction, social presence, and help build community" just like the authors suggest. I would think that any type of tried and true gamification is going to engage the students and get them creatively thinking with their tech choice.

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Universal Design for Learning and other approaches that offer students choice or personalization are great approaches to transform “pedagogical acts” for application.  Such approaches can be difficult to scale in a learning environment due to a lack of resources and need for individualized attention.  However, technology has been demonstrated as a potential avenue for supporting the logistics of such pedagogical approaches.  When technology supports the burden of providing instruction and scaffolding learning, teachers are ideally freed to take on a new role as a learning facilitator who can actively monitor progress and deliver personalized learning interventions.  While I do not have any first-hand experience of doing this in a classroom, I gravitate towards the example of using Khan Academy as a solution to provide student choice and customization in a math curriculum.

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Hi Class,

Sorry for being late to the party. The hospital’s internet blocks Padlet and it has been difficult to make time in the evenings – I apologize for the copy/past work.

I believe socio-cultural and behavioral are the most important literacy perspectives. When addressing this topic, my mind gravitates towards the ISTE standards for digital citizenship.  I believe having a deep rooted understanding of the proper expectations for maintaining ones’ individual identity, acceptable online interactions, and managing personal data is a critical component of digital literacy.  These basic, but foundational practices are the building blocks for which all other digital literacy competencies should be built upon.  With the growing presence of digital content and web 2.0 tools in the K12 environment, classroom management is no longer restricted to a brick-and-mortar environment.  In the future, I envision the need for teachers and administrators to be more diligent and intentional about protecting their students (cyber bullying, FERPA, etc.) in the digital classroom.

Ryan

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Thinking about the existing "educational teaching structure" and the "intersection of technology and creativity", what thoughts do you have towards "enmeshing" the two through suggested pedagogical practices (such as APTs in the reading)?  I appreciated the "building blocks" analogy used in reference to the existing structure of teaching, knowing it always has room for addition that can be built in any direction (not just making a tower).  I think of Minecraft for education when reading this and instructional practices that may be applied to build upon creative thinking and interpretation, development of community, and risk taking.

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This article was very interesting. I had never heard of cognitive apprenticeships before reading this. The example the authors gave of the student from China writing with another English language learner made it an easy connection. It was a good takeaway though.

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This was an interesting read, but I think the idea of a "cognitive apprentice" is not a new concept. I'm trying to figure out how this is different from peer tutoring minus the technology. I think this idea is rooted in social constructivism. The use of technology just makes our classrooms "bigger," expands our learning networks and provides multimodal forms of content. All that said...it still seems like peer tutoring to me!

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This was an interesting case study of literacy on literature, soliciting interpretations, responding to student comments, and making the most of a classroom book study.  With any book, there are many interpretations possible.  The list of questions I might choose to ask a class will not be the same list that my colleague down the hall asks.  I may go deeper into some topics and she into others.  I did enjoy watching the journey of the digital discussion opportunity to glean perspectives from students.  That is certainly of value. The student teachers missed some opportunities (according to the authors) and no doubt that is true, but it could happen with veterans, as well.  We improve our book discussions as we improve our own teaching literacy.

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This selected reading had a solid example within the introduction of a secondary English-Second-Language (ESL) student and the potential of distributed learning through cognitive apprenticeships. Feel free to openly share your experiences/thoughts on what stood out for you within the reading.

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I think that students in K-12 have to be constantly adjusting to the new "norms" of society. Today, practically every student has a smartphone. The smartphone is what kids have shifted to have to be literate in and are actually learning on. The students are learning from those 4 characteristics, semiotic, public, transitory, and product oriented.

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I am most intrigued with the concept of multiliteracies as a focus for instruction in K-16. Multilingual, multimodal, multimedia, all these terms--they can be a focus for planning courses. I think of Language Arts classrooms (because of my background) and wonder to what extent using technology can facilitate deeper language exploration, more authentic products in many modes, and more. It seems the layers of multiple approaches would serve to meet student needs very well.

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We are training our teacher candidates to utilize technology in a variety of ways (for assessment, communication, presentation, research, drill and practice, collaboration, digital literacy, andcitizenship/ethics).  Further, we want them to engage students, all the while aligning to lesson objectives and appropriate standards.  Another goal is to have them involve their students in using technology in a variety of ways to  create, present, share, personalize, process, and extend their learning by how they are tasked with using technology authentically

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Educators are learners first, and can initiate a creative pedagogical process for their students in digital spaces.  The roles of learner and educator in the digital world are instantly swappable, enabling scaffolding on ideas and concepts put forth in such digital arenas as social media platforms, LMS environments, and communication facilities.  The commonality is the networked nature of these environments.  There is a higher potential for and unbridled scalability present in digitally networked facilities.  This potentially leverages the multiuser, multitasking and multithreaded thinking, hence leading to an acceleration of knowledge creation.  Educator/Learners can then reflect, reuse and reiterate concepts for application to creative endeavors.

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I believe that teachers in both K-12 and higher education can apply the use of technologies through the Universal Design for Learning framework focusing on engagement, representation and expression. Using such a framework in conjunction with Cope and Kalantzis' work on multiliteracies would benefit all learners regardless of their ages. Leveraging the use of technology to hook and engage students through video clips, sound bytes, interactive activities is crucial in an age of "always on." In addition, being able to present content in various ways provides access to content which otherwise might have been inaccessible to some students (audio text, interactive presentations, videos, etc.). Finally, providing students with the opportunity to express their understanding in more than one way allows for creativity and choice. Cope and Kalantzis (2014) discussed possible modalities as powerful in ways that "traditional literacy does not recognize or adequately use the meaning and learning potentials" (p. 179). By using a UDL framework to guide lesson planning, a teacher can up the game.

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Thank you for sharing!
I agree, sociocultural is a top perspective for me too Corinne. I would say it is a close second to the cognitive (perspective) learning as mentioned by Dan.

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Within the Cope and Kalantzis reading they share the "why" and "how" of multiliteracies, identifying  transformative "pedagogical acts" for application. How might teachers in both K-12 and higher education apply specific technologies to leverage instructional practices?  I personally think of the author's reference to alternative pathways for students and the potential for personalization as it could apply to multiple theoretical perspectives related to literacy. Feel free to share any potential examples or personal experiences.

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The sociocultural perspective resonates with me the most. The notion that literacy is "an artifact of culture" is a concept with which I strongly agree (particularly in today's society and in K-12 education). Being literate is so much more than the traditional definition of being able to read and write. As technology evolves and provides access to what used to be inaccessible for some, it is important for the perspective of literacy to also evolve. The sociocultural perspective considers literacy as a combination of characteristics, including semiotic (being able to read symbols), public (accessible to all), transitory (dynamic and flexible), and product-oriented (creating and sharing something) (Baker, Pearson & Rozendal, 2010).

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New Literacy: Comparing K-12 and Higher Educaction

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New Literacy: Comparing K-12 and Higher Educaction

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I do not teach in K-12, but higher ed literacy development can use the same technologies including instant messages, social networks and communities, especially cognitive learning which utilizes exercising the critical nature of thinking and memory.  Also, the presence of multiliteracies in learning modules applied to both K-12 and higher education, and utilized when working with software and ebooks and other Internet resources as well as digital multimedia, to learn reading proficiency, for example.

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Day #1 - "Perspective is everything" - How we understand literacy can depend on the way we view it.  Share briefly which literacy perspective you personally identify as the most significant within our current tech world (thinking on K-12 schools). Some examples from this reading are: behavioral, cognitive, sociocultural, feminist, semiotic and multiliteracies, etc.

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I love this article for one simple reason.  It isn't simple.  All too often in education, a complex idea like distributed cognition is conflated with something more familiar (e.g. I've had people basically say to me that distributed cognition is just collaboration in a fancy suit) and implemented without critical missing considerations.  This article and study do a great job of exploring each factor in what seems like a simple online discussion, but in a way that helps the reader appreciate the complexity of do it well...  

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I love this article for one simple reason.  It isn't simple.  All too often in education, a complex idea like distributed cognition is conflated with something more familiar (e.g. I've had people basically say to me that distributed cognition is just collaboration in a fancy suit) and implemented without critical missing considerations.  This article and study do a great job of exploring each factor in what seems like a simple online discussion, but in a way that helps the reader appreciate the complexity of do it well...  

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In doing so, it provides a nice grounded and real world example of how what can often be considered a purely theoretical construct can be applied.  That is, it is one thing to read about distributed cognition in a vacuum.  It is much easier to understand what it is from an article like this one.

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(This is Mike D.  I'm a bad student and didn't sign up for Padlet yet) I like the phrase "alternative pathways" as it relates to individualizing a bit.  I also like the phrase they used "alternative starting points."  This relates to how some content is amenable to direct teaching and has answers, while some does not.  Well-structured vs. ill-structured knowledge.  Once of the great benefits of non-linear media is that is allows for various starting points & pathways when learning about ill-structured material that doesn't have any one answer to know, find, or discover.     

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(This is Mike D.  I'm a bad student and didn't sign up for Padlet yet) I like the phrase "alternative pathways" as it relates to individualizing a bit.  I also like the phrase they used "alternative starting points."  This relates to how some content is amenable to direct teaching and has answers, while some does not.  Well-structured vs. ill-structured knowledge.  Once of the great benefits of non-linear media is that is allows for various starting points & pathways when learning about ill-structured material that doesn't have any one answer to know, find, or discover.     