Comments on MIT's Mitch Resnick: Tools for Creative ThinkingTypePad2007-07-19T14:33:45ZEwan McIntoshhttps://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/tag:typepad.com,2003:https://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2007/07/mits-mitch-resn/comments/atom.xml/kid's playroom commented on 'MIT's Mitch Resnick: Tools for Creative Thinking'tag:typepad.com,2003:6a00d83451f00f69e200e54ef59ac188332007-10-11T07:07:48Z2007-10-11T07:07:48Zkid's playroomhttp://www.thekidstoystore.com/playroom.htmlThis is great for kids to improve their creativity...and with such a young age they could be the next Einstein!...<p>This is great for kids to improve their creativity...and with such a young age they could be the next Einstein! I really am so amazed on how the children's toys evolved!</p>Doug Dickinson commented on 'MIT's Mitch Resnick: Tools for Creative Thinking'tag:typepad.com,2003:6a00d83451f00f69e200e00997f36988332007-07-22T09:00:55Z2007-07-22T09:00:55ZDoug DickinsonThis is what Stephen Heppell said in response to a question I put to him last week re creativity ......<p>This is what Stephen Heppell said in response to a question I put to him last week re creativity ... this thread has been going for a while now in UK moved on by Geoff Dellow ... I put the same question to Sir Ken Robinson having been inspired last year by his TED contibution ( his pr firm did not 'allow' him to respond)</p>
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On 15 Jul 2007, at 10:05, Doug Dickinson wrote:<br />
> I would be really interested to know what Ken and Stephen feel about this'creativity' issue</p>
<p>Interesting debate all round really. My twopennyworth is:</p>
<p>Most efforts that I can remember to establish standards in <br />
educational ICT have failed. And that is no loss. They hold <br />
everything back and make ICT that joke you allude to. The whole world <br />
of ICT is so organic and changes so rapidly - one minute my Space is <br />
cool, the next it's where your grandad goes. Just as adults get their <br />
blackberries finally emailing to each other, so children have stopped <br />
emailing altogether ("it's what your dad does.."). And so on. We need <br />
agile strategies, not ossified ones. I remember being told by a <br />
national agency in the early 90s that a huge internet learning <br />
project I'd developed was wrong for schools because its database <br />
generated pages were not what the web standards were about! (noone <br />
has apologised since of course! lol) but the children poured into it <br />
anyway and we made it into the Guinness Book of Records! - all very <br />
2.0!. This makes me very nervous about any attempts to legislate for <br />
creativity (I lie awake at night trembling at the fear of a <br />
"creativity hour")</p>
<p>In the early days ICT Advisors did a lot of key development work - on <br />
software and even hardware - but their most important role now is to <br />
lay down a level of ambition - for creativity, for ICT, for <br />
ingenuity, for learning. Systems are never ambitious for children. <br />
Children are, so are their teachers, parents and others are too, but <br />
without a shared vision of just how good all this can be, it all <br />
founders into a generation of coasting kids delivering on dull <br />
targets. If you word search the "Higher Standards, Better Schools For <br />
All" white paper for example you will find the word "creativity" is <br />
entirely absent, as indeed is the word "ingenuity". The word <br />
"standard" appears 144 times and "fail"or "failure" 53 times!</p>
<p>Those of us lucky enough to run projects that are not constrained by <br />
the many boxes of systemic factory education (the dismal school <br />
architecture, the tiny lesson blocks in the timetable, the rigid <br />
subject domains and so on) constantly see, and are delighted by, just <br />
how ambitious children can be for their learning - especially where <br />
it is mixed age, project based, over a decent length of time, shared <br />
and not capped in any way. We need to lock that ambition into policy.</p>
<p>Last week I was in a school working with a group of young secondary <br />
children who were busy designing a CPD workshop to bring their <br />
teachers up to speed with the cool things they might do on Facebook, <br />
with why poking isn't rude any more, with Bebo and myArtSpace and <br />
YouTube Comments and so on. They were very sanguine about what their <br />
teachers needed to know and were in turn interested as to the ideas <br />
their teachers might have about using these new places and spaces in <br />
learning. There is a rich irony in imagining that down the corridor <br />
their teachers might have been busy parsing a policy document to plan <br />
the ICT curriculum for those same children!</p>
<p>As I see it schools are busy inventing and testing, with the help of <br />
their students, the many, many ingredients that make great learning. <br />
Then they are assembling their pick of those ingredients to make <br />
great local recipes for learning that work with the context and <br />
culture of their schools. And as their students test the recipes they <br />
refine them and add new flavours. A simply central role for advisors <br />
is to collect and narrate these many ingredients and to pass them on, <br />
rather as samples, as they go from school to school. A more complex <br />
role is to establish metrics that allow us to be clear that something <br />
has happened! This is nowhere more true than with ICT. I think if <br />
Hollywood can measure satisfaction as people leave the rough cut of a <br />
movie (and then fund the re-shoot of an ending as with Pride and <br />
Prejudice in the US version) then we can measure creative esteem, <br />
ingenuity, delight, satisfaction and so on. All or any would be more <br />
helpful measures than cohort aggregate exam passes.</p>
<p>Have a look at www.learnometer.net or indeed at www.heppell.net/ <br />
doctoral if you want to see where I imagine all this will be going. <br />
The learnometer project is already under way.</p>
<p>Sorry to witter on... the debate sounded interesting, and Doug asked, <br />
that was all...<br />
</p>Stephen Heppell commented on 'MIT's Mitch Resnick: Tools for Creative Thinking'tag:typepad.com,2003:6a00d83451f00f69e200e00996c41a88332007-07-20T10:59:12Z2007-07-20T10:59:12ZStephen Heppellhttp://www.heppell.netEwan - that's really interesting... I remember Mitch many years back with his rule based necklace beads passing attibutes of...<p>Ewan - that's really interesting... I remember Mitch many years back with his rule based necklace beads passing attibutes of flashing light to each other. As it happens I'm reading this in the midst of a seminar where we are a year or two into looking afresh at the whole relationship between recognition, accreditation and the narrative of our learning journeys. There are vectors and velocities in this and what is esp interesting about Mitch is his continued pace of progress - always unswervingly faithful to the learner/s.</p>
<p>I'm not sure that creativity IS big business - although the Creative Industries ARE huge here, but I'm sure as heck that INGENUITY is the value part! There is something about being ingenious that embraces purpose too. If I put a vase on my head that might be creative, but it probably isn't ingenious unless there is a purpose for that... if you see what I mean.</p>Tom commented on 'MIT's Mitch Resnick: Tools for Creative Thinking'tag:typepad.com,2003:6a00d83451f00f69e200e00996b5d088332007-07-20T08:31:12Z2008-01-25T01:05:32ZTomhttp://profile.typekey.com/themingway/Speaking for myself and maybe some creative people I've observed, we try lots of things once or twice, and then...<p>Speaking for myself and maybe some creative people I've observed, we try lots of things once or twice, and then move on. We see some kids lose themselves with ceramics, others with theatre or sports. If the activity doesn't connect with our personal creative sense (imagine a born actor in the gardening club), there's no desire to reflect. When we hit on something that ignites a spark, then we start going deeper to understand the tools and how we can use them, and what kinds of designs are possible. Just looking at the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxDw-t3XWd0" rel="nofollow">Skratch Intro Facilitorial</a> I saw lots of different kinds of things you can do: music videos, stories, games, Rube Goldberg contraptions -- different things are going to ignite that spark in different children, so maybe you have to offer them a smorgasbord? </p>john commented on 'MIT's Mitch Resnick: Tools for Creative Thinking'tag:typepad.com,2003:6a00d83451f00f69e200e00995fe8288332007-07-19T15:24:10Z2007-07-19T15:24:10Zjohnhttp://www.sandaigprimary.co.uk/pivot/johnjohnston.phpIncreasing the amount of reflection is the hard part with any sort of creative teaching, maybe especially with young children?...<p>Increasing the amount of reflection is the hard part with any sort of creative teaching, maybe especially with young children? My class just dabbled with scratch, but I could see the need to help some of the children onto a curve, where they thought about how to improve what they did. Not sure exactly how to do that and leave open ended tasks?<br />
Maybe the ACfE will help give Scots classrooms a bit more time to play around with this over the next few years?</p>