A8AntonioGonzalezWalterMahfuzMikelKingOlgaLiskin

A8AntonioGonzalezWalterMahfuzMikelKingOlgaLiskin

To-Do

please discuss / address the following issues: claim: "Few of today's classroom focus on helping students develop as creative thinkers"

1. Do you agree / disagree with this statement of the article?
2. From your personal experience: which are the three most prominent events / activities in your life as a students (in school, in the university) which have helped you to become a more creative thinker?
   1. Analyze these three events by elaborating your description with the framework defined by the creative thinking spiral.
   2. For each of the processes did you have and use tools to support your activity?
3. Discuss whether the processes of the creative thinking spiral are or will influence your research in your course project and in which way.

1. Do you agree with the statement?

We agree. Most schools' curricula are designed to prepare students to do well on standard tests and to enter college. Colleges will then prepare students to get a job. The vast majority of courses are clearly designed as a top-down approach of information feeding, although there are some exceptions (as noted by the statement's opening word "Few").

We believe there are many classes that try to exercise the students' ability of any combination of imagining, creating, playing, sharing, and reflecting, but not many will encompass all these exercises in a continual (or cyclical) fashion that allows the individual to really exercise the ability to think and act creatively. Probably engineers and experimental scientists (and inventors) are more prone to gaining the mindset of a creative thinker due to the nature of the fields, but most students are lucky if they leave with just the information needed to succeed.

2. Analyze the three most prominent events / activities in your life as a students (in school, in the university) which have helped you to become a more creative thinker

In our experience, the common methodology to educate students is to lecture, make the students memorize the material, and then to make them prove it in exams. This methodology does not help students to become more creative thinkers. Only when a student is made to create or present something do we feel that a student is being truly creative.

The few classes that do force students tend to involve projects. The projects in these classes tend to be more open-ended and force the students to come up with their own ideas. Open-ended projects must have some structure, but as the article states, they must leave room for the students to "imagine." Many times the projects that bring about the most creativity are the projects that require an understanding of the world we live in. These projects force the students to think beyond the context of the classroom.As the article states, "students must learn to think creatively, plan systematically, analyze critically, work collaboratively, communicate clearly, design iteratively,and learn continuously." The projects that challenge the students the most in these areas tend to invoke the most amount of creativity. While their are no explicit tools for projects, some projects such as programming projects give students tools to work with to point them in the right direction. Some projects such as robotic projects provide a lot of tools for the students while research projects tend to have very little. We think that the projects that do provide "tools" and that require active participation using the "tools" tend to force students to be more creative. We feel that good projects fit the creative thinking spiral very closely.

Another area of student life that helps us become better creative thinkers is collaboration. We think graduate school in particular emphasizes this but classes that "force" or require students to voice their opinion/perspective/ideas tend to improve the student's creativity because feedback motivates the student to think more critically. Collaboration forces the student to gain a perspective, makes the student more accountable for his/her ideas, and also helps the student get inspired. We think that this fits in the "reflection" portion of the spiral. Many times the best ideas are the result of bouncing around different ideas and weighing the pros and cons with your classmates. While there are not many tools to support collaboration yet, some classes (such as this class) have incorporated Web 2.0 tools to motivate collaboration. These tools have created more ways for students to collaborate, although we believe there sometimes is no substitute for face to face discussions.

Lastly,presentations are key to improving a student's creativity. This is very similar to collaboration in that it forces the student to reflect on his ideas and his work. Presentations are another way for students to reflect on what they have done and also allows other students to weigh in on their creative process. It also functions as a way to inspire other students. Many times presentations can inspire other students because it can get the "competitive juices" flowing. Tools such as power point can help students present their ideas, but sometimes these tools can be misused and make presentations less effective. However tools such as wikis that do expose a student's work to larger audiences can be very effective because they keep the creative thinking spiral going and can inspire other students to start "imagining."

3. Discuss whether the processes of the creative thinking spiral are or will influence your research in your course project and in which way.

The processes of the creative thinking spiral influence our project(s) in two ways:
(1)
As we want to motivate people to be creative and create parts of something (text/sketchup model/code) we should definitely be aware of the steps in the creative thinking spiral that are 'necessary' to be creative and try to support all of them. For example, to support the participators in imagining ideas, we should create the right space for this by giving them room for their imaginations but also building a framework (for example by giving a few constraints to the task) which helps the users to create a situation in their imagination. To support the reflection about creations, it would make sense to provide a communication platform for the users such as a discussion forum or a 'comment' function.
(2)
Both technologies, Crickets and Scratch provide some materials to the users that help them create things. These materials are very general so that the users can use them but still can be creative and implement all their ideas. This is an idea that might be interesting to pursue for us. We could provide the participators with either links to information that helps them create things, or even elements that they can use for their creations, like code fragments for special constructs, funny fantasy phrases for texts, components for sketch up models. But it is important to think of general element so that they do not influence the directions of thought of the users too much.