Creativity and Me

Yesterday's class discussion on project based learning struck a real chord of fear inside of me. I am sure it has to do with the word "creative." Somehow that word causes my blood pressure to rise and I get a panicked feeling inside..."I'm NOT creative! How am I going to do this?!?" And so, to face my fear head-on, I am basing my fall inquiry on the topic: "How can I overcome my fear of creativity to encourage my students to be creative, especially in the area of writing?"
I will blog separately about this inquiry and the process I will embark on to explore it.

For now, these are the 3 things I want to cover today. First, why do I have this fear? Secondly, what does creative mean to me? And third, when do I feel like I have been creative or helped my students be creative?

Why am I so afraid of being creative or of allowing my students to be creative? I think the roots of it come from being a perfectionist and being raised by a perfectionist. Nothing less than perfection was acceptable, at least that was my perception. I am also a control freak (according to my children). I want to be able to plan everyone's life. I work hard at organizing things so that it will all work out. Consequently, I have high blood pressure! :) I think that if a student is being creative, I can't judge it.

Being creative, to me, means doing something without a map or directions, which of course, to my organized mind is very stressful. You can never predict the outcome of creativity, hence it is impossible to plan for it. These are all emotional statements, and shouldn't be taken as a definition!

I have tended, over the past 24 hours, to be very hard on myself because of my lack of creativity. And yet, I know that if I am honest with myself, I have been creative and have allowed and encouraged it in my students, as well as my own children. My annual Christmas letters are creative writing pieces, if I say so myself. I have enjoyed giving scrapbook assignments to my students where they were required to do some creative writing and design.
I have honestly tried to support my young elementary students in their creative art ventures, always saying something positive about their attempts. I have sometimes given students a math problem to figure out themselves.

So there you have it, some initial ramblings of my thoughts of creativity...this is a scary path I'm on.

Project Based Learning

I don't know about you, but I hated projects as a kid in school. I much preferred getting assignments where there was a right answer, had a completion target that was easy to see and concepts that were easily mastered and memorized. But that was me and my learning style. I am a linear, logical person.

Which then begs the question....how will I ever teach in a project based learning environment? I can see the benefits. Students can become more engaged, dig deeper, apply knowledge they already have and construct new knowledge, incorporate curriculum content from different areas and be creative on top of all that. And there might be the reason I find projects so hard. I maintain, mostly truthfully, that I am not a creative person. Anything that requires some sort of creativity causes me to freeze up. I feel like I can't do it. I think most of this wall comes from my need to know I have done something right and perfect. I have to get over that.
This will be the hurdle for me to overcome.

Technology and Curriculum

"In short, the theory and practice of technology integration need to be inextricably connected to the processes and products of curriculum development." (p. 99, Rethinking Technology in Schools, by Vanessa Elaine Domine)

What? You mean we don't start with the technology and then figure out what we could teach using it? I know, I know, this is what we've been told over and over again. In fact, I remember my university profs way back in the 80's saying the same thing. First, know what you want to teach. The pedagogy comes first. Then, begin to think how you would like to deliver the lesson. What tools would be the best way to achieve understanding in your students? It may very well be some sort of technology, but it might not. We need to be open and aware of our context, our students, and be intimately connected to the curriculum and then think of how we will do it.

Learning over the past week - A Summary

1. I am learning some practical technology tools to use in the classroom, such as mixbook, kidblog, blabberize, wordle, etc. This connects to capacity #3 in my LTT program "use, evaluate and integrate existing and emerging technologies into your practice." This is important to me because, as we studied earlier this week, education must and is changing. I need to be a part of it. Children these days need to use emerging technologies to be a part of our new society. Their definition of knowledge is fluid and is only worthwhile if it is useful. By using some of the above tools, I am encouraging my students to use creativity and share their work with a wider community. Evidence that shows this learning would be the notes I've taken in my journal with these websites listed, my new membership at places like mixbook, and my journal entries from the past few days where I've talked about how much I was learning.

2. I am learning to appreciate and participate in the global education community using such things as twitter, education pln, classroom 2.0 and a few educators' blogs. This links to Capacity 5 in the LTT program "access, evaluate, use and participate in new media interactions in education." This is important to me because i must model being a lifelong learner for my students. If I feel that it is important for them to know and behave in such a way that they are part of a global society, I must also behave that way. By participating in these communities I am acknowledging that people outside of my own "home" circle have ideas of worth for me and also, equally as important, that I may have something to offer to them. Evidence that shows this learning would include my posts on Classroom 2.0 (see previous blog), my tweets, and my explorations on the web (and my journal responses to them).

Assessment: A necessary evil or catalyst for growth?

This is an old discussion, I know, but there have been a few new ideas that have presented themselves to me during our reading and research today.
First, the difference between summative and formative assessments. In our table group, we defined the two as summative being the one that is at the end of something. A final report. The formative assessment is the one that's ongoing; it's the one that is used more directly as assessment for learning, as it relates directly to the project at hand.
I really liked the new questions for assessment as put forth by Douglas Reeves and quoted by Will Richardson:

Learn (What did you know? What are you able to do?)

Understand (What is the evidence that you can apply learning in one domain to another?)
Share (How did you use what you have learned to help a person, the class, the community or the planet?)
Explore (What did you learn beyond the limits of the lesson? What mistakes did you make, and how did you learn from them?)
Create (What new ideas, knowledge, or understanding can you offer?)

Gary Stager disagrees. He believes all assessment is an interruption to learning. Well, I disagree with Mr. Stager. Assessment (oh how I long to shorten that word and just use the first 3 letters with a period after...) can be used to help students. As Chris Lehmann notes in his blog, "assessment as mentoring, assessment as skill-building, assessment as learning about how to create, revise and present. "

Another aha moment for me was the barriers to proper assessment. First, we teach what we assess. In the back of every teacher's mind is the prescribed learning outcomes, the report cards, etc. We know what we need to report on, so therefore that is what we teach. That does limit what learning opportunities we give to our students.
Secondly, we only get the assessments we can afford in time and or money. How true! So often, report card time is a high stress time where we quickly do some final tests on a unit, etc., but haven't had time to properly do "assessment for learning."
" And as Reeves notes, a third depressing fact is that this will require us to be able to step out of our own school experience, to be willing to define success in ways that are unfamiliar and more nuanced. That may be the biggest barrier of all."

I've mostly quoted and reflected from the following blogs:
http://practicaltheory.org/serendipity/index.php?/archives/1103-Why-Assess.html by entitled "Why Assess" by Chris Lehmann

and the second by William Richardson on his blog entitled "weblogg-ed" at the following link: http://weblogg-ed.com/2010/new-assessments-for-new-learning/

Putting myself out there...Capacity 5! HA!

So I've done it. I've responded to a stranger who was asking a question that I thought maybe, just maybe, I could contribute to an answer. I know, I know...this is probably nothing to most of you, but it is to me. I have never felt like I could help anyone online with anything techy before. I'm taking this course simply because I am the newbie...I don't know anything technological...do I? Well, I was on classroom 2.0 (an educational Ning site) where i saw a question from a teacher asking for help using technology in reading education with young students. Well, although a voice in the back of my head keeps telling me "Oh come on...she probably knows all that. You have nothing new. You're way behind the times. She wants something great!"...but I'm ignoring that voice. And here I am.

Information Overload Once Again

So today we've looked at 8 different educational learning networks that we might be interested in following. Some were definitely more friendly than others and some were more applicable to my own situation. I enjoyed the exploration of these and of the 8 I have decided to become active (well, at least observe and join) in a few.

The first one I joined is the Educator's PLN. I enjoy this site because it's a place where there are a lot of educators, including those that I would consider to be gurus that I trust. :) It's got the option of live chat, and the founder, Tom Whitby, has been available on there whenever I've looked. There are groups of interest to different folks, and if I don't see what I'm looking for, I am welcome to make my own. In the few minutes I was on there today, I was able to make a connection for a fellow classmate of mine on the blog tab....both male kindergarten teachers.

The second one I'd like to join is the teachersconnecting.com which is a place where teachers can collaborate online for ideas and for joint projects with classes. As I don't quite know what I'll be teaching yet next year, I'll wait to sign up for this once I have my assignment and then can find people with similar interests and grade levels.

The third one, and the one I think I may be most interested in, is
http://www.jenuinetech.com/ . It appeals to me directly for a few reasons. One is that the homepage is very inviting and directly aimed at primary teachers. The projects she has going appeal very much to me, and I'm sure to most primary students. The projects are easily doable and relate directly to IRP's (unfortunately to the California ones, but maybe they can relate to BC?).

And that's just the start of it. We also worked on our igoogle page, which to me is much handier than netvibes. We personalized our page and linked many of our previous explorations (ie delicious, twitter, etc) to it, so that all these feeds are easily accessible.

And now we're being called somewhere else, so I've got to sign off... Hope I can handle it!

The future of Education

I grew up in the Industrial Age of education. According to Jane Gilbert, this age emphasized an organized system of education delivery. However, in our now technological age, this method of delivery no longer suffices. Students now have access to any information they need and so no longer see the need to be force-fed random facts that to them have no connection to the real world. And yet, our curriculum requires that we, as teachers, continue to fill their heads with these tidbits. But, we are also trying to lead our students, and ourselves, into the age where knowledge is fluid. Knowledge, to this generation, is only meaningful when they have had a chance to incorporate it and use it in a deliberate way to construct further learning.

So what does that mean for us as teachers? How can we make learning meaningful when we are faced with this huge list of curriculum objectives that we need to report on? How can we satisfy government and school district requirements and do it in such a way that students are prepared to be part of the global community?

At this point, I'm glad I teach at the elementary level where group projects, collaborative learning and curriculum content is easily integratable. We can cover lots of content area in creative ways. But I think we still need to do more. At least for myself, assessment is still an individual thing. I still want to know if Johnny can spell basic words, count to 100 and recount basic needs of animals. That is going to be more of my focus this year, I think...to think of creative, but meaningful, ways of assessment for my students.

Okay, that was really a random post, but this article has got me thinking...education has to change. Am I ready to be part of the process?

ISTE / NETS-T Goal for Fall 2010

"Design and Develop Digital-Age learning Experiences and Assessments"

This is my broad goal. I figure that no matter what my teaching assignment ends up being, I'll be able to do this. Last year in my grade 1 class, I started this with using Kidpix as a form of assessment in regards to a unit we had done on bears. Each student designed a kidpix page illustrating one of the facts we had discovered. They also added a recording of their voice saying what the fact was. I was also able to add their own picture onto their slide, so that when people viewing it at our assembly were able to see who had done the picture and whose voice they were hearing.

This year is a big question mark right now, but with any level I end up teaching, I can build on what I learned last year. I'd like to specifically work on the first point "design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity." I'd like to have my students design a digital product to demonstrate to their peers a segment of their learning. I'd also like them to be able to take this and show their parents what they have learned that relates to the curriculum, but is using a digital media to do this.

Depending on the class I get, I may even attempt to have them design a portfolio of sorts to track their learning through the year. I do know that in the midst of everything that happens in a school year, this is a lofty goal at this point, but I'd like to try. Even if it's only something they've entered two or three times in a year, perhaps to go along with my report card writing. Just a thought...

So the next day, we're supposed to also connect to a capacity in the program we're doing. I think this particular goal has to do with the third capacity: "use, evaluate and integrate existing and emerging technologies into your practice."