A8XNicholasEmbreeScottKellerJacobWinsnesky

A8XNicholasEmbreeScottKellerJacobWinsnesky

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 do agree with the statement the article makes. Education is failing society right now because children just learn more dynamically and need to be motivated more to thrive in an educational environment. Children are still being taught with old ways of learning and are severely out of date. Crickets and Scratch addresses these main points of motivating children to be interested in their studies and creates a educational environment in which students can be more creative and expressive.

Scott: I agree with Nick that this statement is predominantly true in most schools. There is a strict way of teaching and a static curriculum in a changing world. Kids are being brought up in a fast-paced digital world and education needs to adapt to this. New technologies need to be incorporated into the classroom and more time needs to be given for expression, creativity, and adaptive thinking. The failings of education in regards to creativity is especially highlighted by the current state of the Arts in most schools. Art, music, etc. are being phased out by accentuation of more formal subjects. I for instance, had no choice of elective in high school to pursue art as I had to adhere to a schedule to get into AP and prepare for college.

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

Nick: I remember when a lecturer came to speak to the class in middle school to talk to us about paradigm's. He wasn't that great of a speaker but he had great examples to show how we as a society view things inside the box. He showed us a normal bicycle seat and another that looked like a meat hammer. He had said that they both served the same purpose but no one could ever see that the "meat hammer" seat was in actuality a bike seat. This example had really shown me how society(including myself) are really stuck in a paradigm about the way we think, and it restricts creativity and inventiveness. I now actively try to think outside the box when being creative and try to put a new view upon a design.

Scott: In elementary school in North Carolina, I would routinely leave class and go to a small room with a group of people for side classes as part of an Academically Gifted (AG)program. In this class we would spend a few hours a week doing critical thinking problems, solving puzzles, and doing creativity and conceptualization exercises. When I moved to Illinois, I continued such a program at my new school. Although I missed a lot of regular class material (most importantly addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division practice which still haunts me today as it takes me 30 minutes to add 2 + 2 in my head) these programs really expanded the way I thought about things and I think made me a better problem solver and more creative thinker today. The other thing that is jumping out in my head is my science class in I believe 8th grade. We participated in a science competition where we had to think creatively to create and accomplish goals. For example, we had to create vehicles, find ways to do certain tasks with minimal materials, create Rube Goldberg machines, etc.

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 do think that the processes of the creative thinking spiral will influence our research in our course projects. The creative thinking spiral is the design standard when thinking creatively, once you get an idea, you run with it, see what works and what doesn't, then recursively build upon your initial idea to make it even better. The creative spiral will only help in our course project by thinking of new ways to gather data, analyze the given data and create innovative ways of presenting the data to show our findings.

Jacob decided to work with another group. Didn't know how to rename file.