A8JoeMcCabeBenjaminGoldenGrahamRobertsNickHughes

A8JoeMcCabeBenjaminGoldenGrahamRobertsNickHughes

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?

Nick -

I disagree with this statement based on my personal experience as a student. Growing up I may not have been introduced to programming and engineering scenarios as the children were in the article, but that doesn't mean that my teachers were neglecting to teach me how to be creative or solve problems. The author of the article seemed to think that creativity and problem solving were most easily achieved using a computer and software, but my idea of creativity is something that doesn't involve a rigid structure with limited operations. In other words, I think it is an overgeneralization to assume that contemporary classrooms are less creative because they lack a new piece of intuitive software and a simple engineering kit. It is true that these types of tools can help students become better creative thinkers, but I doubt they induce unprecedented creativity. There are several other outlets that students could utilize in order to achieve or surpass the same goals. It is hard to tell whether the author is "sowing the seeds for a more creative society" or "sowing the seeds for a more computerized society." Aside from these critiques I think there is value to the cricket and scratch concepts. I would like to see them developed further, but only if they are aiming for creativity and not a mass generation of computer scientists.

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

Graham and Ben -

One experience which helped me become a more creative thinker was a project that I did my sophomore year in college which required me to create a "critter" to compete in a survival simulation. The critter that had a fixed set of possible actions that it could do on its turn and only had information about the spaced directly next to it. To begin with I had to think about what would make a good design for a critter, meaning that it would survive for a long time. After this I created it and put it into the simulation to test it against some default critters provided by the professor. Once I had a good design I could share it with other students and use theirs to test mine. After all of this testing I was able to reflect whether the design worked and what some of the drawbacks of it might me, which allowed me to go back to the beginning and think of an improved critter to compete with. There was a framework setup for managing the critters and the game so that all I had to worry about was the action of my critter. There was an interface for the critter class so the scope of its actions were limited. This allowed me to focus all of my energy on my design instead of back end implementation. There were not any other tools provided for me.

Another experience I had was with program called Hyperstudio when I was in elementary school. The idea was that each student was supposed to create a game using this tool. I chose to try an implement a game similar to Myst where a user can move between scenes and interact with a limited number of different object. Since Hyperstudio greatly simplified the logic behind the game it was easy to work on the graphics and behavior that I wanted. I then played it and had other people play the game and from this I got feedback which I used to further improve the game. The Hyperstudio software was fundamental in allowing me to be creative and successful in implementing my ideas.

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

Joe -

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

I believe that the applications like Facebook and the iphone sdk allow users and programers to function on different areas and levels of the creative thinking spiral. As a user begins in Facebook, they begin to model their profile after a template. Soon they find their friends on the site and begin to follow their actions, like updating their status and uploading photos. Like with facebook, the iphone sdk allows user to create their own apps. As a person is inspired by a current iphone, the sdk provides them with the tools necessary to create their own apps. As they release their new app, that might inspire someone else to create an app based off their idea. And the cycle continues. Our group would like to explore why people participate within this cycle of creative thinking.