More Resources on Creativity and Online Learning

Here is your next installment (part three) on a collaborative exploration of “teaching more creatively and teaching creativity.”

Touching briefly on the research, thoughts, and works of my heroes and gurus in this field (like Sir Ken Robinson, Dr. Curtis Bonk, and Daniel Pink), check out the other “creativity in education” articles at this site. Please click on one or more of the following links:

• Creativity in education – Are we ready for a new paradigm shift?
• Creative teaching and teaching creativity – PART I – How creative are you?
• Creative teaching and teaching creativity – PART II – Definitions & rationale
• Creative teaching and teaching creativity – PART III – Creative techniques
• Arts advocacy
• 52 creative tips to “supercharge” the school musical
• Creativity in schools revisited
• More creativity resources
• If I were a school superintendent
• Lessons in creativity
• More lessons in creativity

Thanks to the generosity and inspiration of Indiana University Professor of Education Dr. Curtis Bonk, today we have a new book list and additional “free” materials with a focus on improving online learning.

More for Your Library on Creativity

Have you read any of these? (Thanks to Amazon.com, who would love to sell you these, a short description is included… mostly copied from a part of their web marketing.)

Catmull, Ed (2014). Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming Unseen Forces in Way of Inspiration. Random H. From Ed Catmull, co-founder (with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) of Pixar Animation Studios, the Academy Award–winning studio behind Inside Out and Toy Story, comes an incisive book about creativity in business and leadership.

Shenk, J. W. (2014). Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs. HMH. Weaving the lives of scores of creative duos—from John Lennon and Paul McCartney to Marie and Pierre Curie to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak—Joshua Wolf Shenk identifies the core qualities of that dizzying experience we call “chemistry.” Revealing the six essential stages through which creative intimacy unfolds, Shenk draws on new scientific research and builds an argument for the social foundations of creativity—and the pair as its primary embodiment.

McArdle, Megan (2014). The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well is the Key to Success. Viking. Most new products fail. So do most small businesses. And most of us, if we are honest, have experienced a major setback in our personal or professional lives. So what determines who will bounce back and follow up with a home run? If you want to succeed in business and in life, Megan McArdle argues in this hugely thought-provoking audiobook, you have to learn how to harness the power of failure.

Brown-Martin, Graham (2014). Learning Re-imagined. Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation. Learning Reimagined takes its readers on a journey in search of innovation in the way we learn and teach. Filled with case studies and interviews, the book invites the reader to join the author as he travels the world to investigate the challenges that today’s educators face.

Wagner, T. (2012). Creating Innovators: Making of Young People Who Change World. Scribner. From a prominent educator, author, and founder of Harvard’s Change Leadership Group comes a provocative look at why innovation is today’s most essential real-world skill and what young people need from parents, teachers, and employers to become the innovators of America’s future.

Martinez & Stager (2013). Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, & Engineering in the Classroom. There’s a technological and creative revolution underway. Amazing new tools, materials and skills turn us all into makers. Using technology to make, repair or customize the things we need brings engineering, design and computer science to the masses. Fortunately for educators, this maker movement overlaps with the natural inclinations of children and the power of learning by doing. The active learner is at the center of the learning process, amplifying the best traditions of progressive education. This book helps educators bring the exciting opportunities of the maker movement to every classroom.

Robinson, Sir Ken (2013). Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions.   The Element gives readers an inspirational and practical guide to self-improvement, happiness, creativity, and personal transformation, introducing the concept of self-fulfillment through the convergence of natural talents and personal passions. Among the questions that the book dives into include:

• How do I find out what my talents and passions are?
• What if I love something I’m not good at?
• What if I’m good at something I don’t love?
• What if I can’t make a living from my Element?
• How do I do help my children find their Element?

The E-Learning Revolution

Before I retired in 2013, I noticed a growing trend of assigning web-based or online assisted classes to music teachers, especially for the Fine and Performing Arts subjects of music and art appreciation, music history, music theory, and composition. For example, two of the industry leaders in the field of interactive music learning software are MusicFirst, the Digital Education Division of the Music Sales Group (https://www.musicfirst.com/) and SmartMusic (MakeMusic, Inc.) at https://www.smartmusic.com/. General music and instrumental teachers are now taking advantage of innovative and fresh new enrichment tools offered by the web.

On his travelinEdMan website, Dr. Curtis Bonk gave an abstract of the talk he made in Seoul, Korea on September 21, 2016 (see http://travelinedman.blogspot.com/), providing an excellent history and perspective of the origin and “revolution” of online learning:

The Fourth Industrial Revolution Meets the Fourth E-Learning Revolution

Over the past few centuries, humankind has entered and exited a series of industrial ages from the age of steam and water power to the immense benefits of electricity and efficient assembly line workers to the tremendous life enhancements from computers and pervasive automation. Now we are on the cusp of the fourth industrial age related to cyber physical systems with extensive physical, biological, digital, and educational implications. It is in this age that we now are witnessing hyper-accelerating advancements in robotics, mobile super-computing, artificial intelligence, drone technology, autonomous vehicles, and much more. Similarly, in education, after just two decades of Web-based learning, we have entered the fourth phase or wave of e-learning. Interesting, each of the four waves of e-learning have come exactly seven years apart. First was the establishment of Web browsers and learning portals, brought about by Web search companies like Netscape which was founded on April 4, 1994. Seven years to the day later, MIT announced the OpenCourseWare (OCW) movement on April 4, 2001 and the age of open education was spawned. Another seven year span resulted in the first massive open online courses (MOOCs) in 2008. Now we enter the fourth phase of e-learning involving the personalization of e-learning. This is the age where mentors, tutors, experts, colleagues, and instructors can appear instantaneously on a mobile device. As with the fourth wave of the industrial revolution, there is immense change around the world today related to new forms of learning typically involving technology in the fourth phase of e-learning. In fact, there are three mega-trends related to learning technology today: (1) technologies for engagement; (2) technologies for pervasive access; and (3) technologies for the personalization and customization of learning. To better understand these new forms of learning delivery, Professor Bonk will discuss these three megatrends as well as his recent research on the personalization of e-learning. Along the way, insights will be offered into where the fourth industrial revolution bumps into and fuels the fourth e-learning revolution.

– Dr. Curtis Bonk

TEC-VARIETY

For those of you who design or teach web courses, download a copy of Adding Some TEC-VARIETY: 100+ Activities for Motivating and Retaining Learners Online, by Curtis Bonk and Elaine Khoo.

The authors have made an online version of this work available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. For details, go to
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/. The e-book PDF can be accessed through the book homepage at http://tec-variety.com.

1. Tone/Climate: Psychological Safety, Comfort, Sense of Belonging
2. Encouragement: Feedback, Responsiveness, Praise, Supports
3. Curiosity: Surprise, Intrigue, Unknowns
4. Variety: Novelty, Fun, Fantasy
5. Autonomy: Choice, Control, Flexibility, Opportunities
6. Relevance: Meaningful, Authentic, Interesting
7. Interactivity: Collaborative, Team-Based, Community
8. Engagement: Effort, Involvement, Investment
9. Tension: Challenge, Dissonance, Controversy
10. Yielding Products: Goal Driven, Purposeful Vision, Ownership

Cognitive Flexibility

Released on July 22, 2016 by Edutopia.org., I came upon this blog-post by Dr. Judy Willis: “Building Students Cognitive Flexibility” (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/building-students-cognitive-flexibility-judy-willis).

Is this article promoting 21st Century learning skills… something involving creativity or critical thinking? Yes! Absolutely! Bring them on!

Her opening premise:

In today’s world, the skillsets of cognitive flexibility are more critical and valuable than ever before. These skillsets include:

• Open-minded evaluation of different opinions, perspectives, and points of view
• Willingness to risk mistakes
• Consideration of multiple ways to solve problems
• Engagement in learning, discovery, and problem solving with innovative creativity.

While she suggests new ways to “activate your students” developing neural networks of skill-sets for “cognitive flexibility,” she defines several new opposing concepts: “inattentional blindness” vs. open-minded vision, and divergent thinking vs. the factory model of education. She provides excellent examples of lesson activities as she sums up her thoughts on learning transfer: “When you provide learners with opportunities to transfer their learning to novel applications, you’re extending their cross-brain connections and creative potentials.”

I liked her concluding quote: “H.G. Wells predicted that our future would be a race between education and catastrophe.”

Revisiting “BobWeb – The Best of Bonk”

To close up this edition of sharing creativity resources for educators, we return to Curtis Bonk and my all-time favorite website (about which you have previously heard me rave!): http://www.indiana.edu/~bobweb/r546/index.html.

If you have not visited here before, go directly to one of his four modules:

1. Motivational Strategies
2. Creativity
3. Critical Thinking
4. Cooperative Learning

For your own edification, here are some things you can explore while enjoying the “wonderful world of BobWeb!”

1. Select the “lecture presentation” menu link and view his week #3 Creative Thinking Techniques “Example of Metaphorical Thinking: Life on a Train.”
2. Download and peruse his PowerPoint slides for “Week 2: Alternative Instructional Strategies – Active Learning, Motivation, and Creative Thinking Week 2 Lecture Presentation.” There is much to consume here. For example, one slide (#33) describes these principles of active learning (but watch out, slide #38 and 39 offers a teacher self-assessment on these best practices! How well did you do?):
   • Authentic/Raw Data
   • Student Autonomy/Inquiry
   • Relevant/Meaningful/Interests
   • Link to Prior Knowledge
   • Choice and Challenge
   • Teacher as Facilitator and Co-Learner
   • Social Interaction and Dialogue
   • Problem-Based & Student Gen Learning
   • Multiple Viewpoints/Perspectives
   • Collab, Negotiation, & Reflection
3. Click on the menu link “Task Examples,” and download/read “Final Project: Creativity Unit Final Creativity Unit–Elementary students.”
4. On the same web page, go to “Option A: Curriculum Brainstorm EXAMPLE 4 Reflection and Personal Exploration Activity.“

As a reminder to the fact that we ourselves live simultaneous both as teachers and life-long students, creativity is all about being willing to take risks. Check out these resources that will “spice up” your daily lessons, and focus on student inquisitiveness, ingenuity, inventiveness, flexibility of thought, and inquiry-based learning! It is worth repeating here: Bloom’s Taxonomy and Depth of Knowledge charts place creating at the top level of higher-order thinking. In “Creativity on the Brink” (2013), Alane Starko connected creativity to deep understanding: “If we want students to master the content, they must do something with it beyond simple repetition. They must use it in meaningful ways and make it their own.” Go ahead and use the above online tools as aids to classroom discovery and self-learning, but strive to truly engage the students in the subject matter, make it fun and intriguing, and build student autonomy, motivation, teamwork, and “purposeful vision” for further study.

What are your thoughts?

PKF

© 2016 Paul K. Fox