Group items tagged

"In the past, I've had the very good fortune to work with both Destination Imagination and Odyssey of the Mind in my classroom. Both of these programs allow kids to explore creativity to the nth degree and offer engaging and learning-filled explorations beyond what is typically offered in school. The guiding philosophies of both programs are: In what ways can we be creative? How creative can we be? We often ask our students to be creative, but how often do we ask them to extend that creativity into previously unexplored territory? How often do we invite them to up the WOW Factor? I often muse about that when I think about Web 2.0 tools that I share in workshops. I'm always trying to brainstorm divergent ways to use these versatile tools at multiple cognitive levels as well as creative extensions beyond what the tool was designed for."

"We've introduced you to a variety of quality image sites where you can find Creative Commons images, but the Creative Commons license goes far beyond just images. Different types of content are licensed online using Creative Commons - videos, music, and even blog content. You'll find plenty of it online to share, remix and use commercially. When it comes to Creative Commons music - there are certainly no shortage of websites with audio you can use for any occasion."

"According to our research, more than 90% of Creative Commons photos are not attributed at all. To make matters worse, less than 10% of the photos that do credit the original work are attributed properly. This means that more than 99% of Creative Commons photos are not adequately attributed. Not without pride, we are happy to notice that most of the bloggers using Foter.com attribute CC photos properly, which is greatly facilitated by our "ready to paste" attribution info. Every time they intend to use a searched image, all they need to do is copy the image and the accompanying attribution details into their blogs. Most is not enough, though. People often find CC photos on various sites and wonder how to attribute them. In order to help you, our team prepared a comprehensive infographic that reflects interesting research findings, gives details of Creative Commons licenses and illustrates how to properly attribute CC photos. We do hope it will contribute to the overall quality of posted materials and promote respect for copyright owners."

"A recent New Yorker article entitled "Groupthink" takes a fascinating look at the concept of brainstorming. According to author Jonah Lehrer, brainstorming was introduced in the late 1940s as a creativity-inducing practice by advertising guru Alex Osborn in his book Your Creative Power. The book was a surprise bestseller, and Osborn's ideas about brainstorming, according to Lehrer, became "the most widely used creativity technique in the world." Whether in business, politics, entertainment, or education, group-thinking was and still is regarded as the ultimate path to ingenuity and productivity."

"The word divergent is partly defined as "tending to be different or develop in different directions." Divergent thinking refers to the way the mind generates ideas beyond proscribed expectations and rote thinking -- what is usually referred to "thinking outside the box," and is often associated with creativity. Convergent thinking, on the other hand, requires one to restrict ideas to those that might be correct or the best solution to a problem. "

"Teaching students to respect the intellectual property of others is important in this digital "cut and paste" world we live in. One great project to share with students that can better help them understand how and when they may use images created by others is the Creative Commons project."

"Can creativity be taught? Absolutely. The real question is: "How do we teach it?" In school, instead of crossing subjects and classes, we teach them in a very rigid manner. Very rarely do you witness math and science teachers or English and history teachers collaborating with each other. Sticking in your silo, shell, and expertise is comfortable. Well, it's time to crack that shell. It's time to abolish silos and subjects. Joichi Ito, director of the M.I.T. Media Lab, told me that rather than interdisciplinary education, which merges two or more disciplines, we need anti-disciplinary education, a term coined by Sandy Pentland, head of the lab's Human Dynamics group."

"Last year we introduced Hangouts On Air to a limited number of broadcasters, enabling them to go live with friends and fans, for all the world to see. Since then, this small community has grown the feature in lots of creative ways. And they've made one thing crystal clear: when groups of passionate individuals can broadcast live, together, the results are truly remarkable:"

"When done right, school can provide each individual child with experiences that will advance and deepen his or her problem-solving capacity, creativity, caring, and ownership of learning. Besides ensuring that all students have compassionate, effective teachers creating classroom conditions and opportunities for these things to occur, a school principal's primary responsibility is to allocate the scarce resources of time, space, and funding to maximize children's positive and productive experiences of school."

"Project V.O.I.C.E. (Vocal Outreach Into Creative Expression) is a national movement that celebrates and inspires youth self-expression through Spoken Word Poetry. Conceived in 2004, Project V.O.I.C.E. encourages young people to engage with the world around them and use Spoken Word Poetry as an instrument through which they can explore and better understand their culture, their society, and ultimately themselves. Project V.O.I.C.E. brings together performance, writing, and a supportive environment to inspire youth to recognize that their views are significant, valid, and necessary. "

"This is a crucial time for education. Every system in every country is in the process of figuring out how to reboot education to teach skills, application, and attitude in addition to recall and understanding. Helping students be able to grapple with increased problem solving and inquiry, be better critical and creative thinkers, show greater independence and engagement, and exhibit skills as presenters and collaborators is the challenge of the moment. That's why so many educators are using the project based learning (PBL) model. PBL has proven to be a means for setting up the kind of problem-solving challenges that engage students in deeper learning and critical inquiry. It requires students to research, collaborate, decide on the value of information and evidence, accept feedback, design solutions, and present findings in a public space-all factors that create the conditions under which high performance and mastery are most likely to emerge. The rise of PBL, in fact, is a success story for education."

"When four South Carolina districts joined forces in 2013 to compete for a federal Race to the Top grant, their shared educational vision was clear: Teaching students to be creative innovators and independent learners will improve school performance. The challenge was finding a model to encompass all the sweeping changes they wanted to implement. What the districts' leaders eventually settled on was the term "enterprise learning," which refers to both a popular public education program overseas, and a model for professional development in corporate America. The South Carolina schools-working collectively as the Carolina Consortium for Enterprise Learning (CCEL)-are now trying to blend the two programs together with the help of $24.9 million in federal funding."

Literacy Is Not Enough: 21st Century Fluency for the Digital Age by Ian Jukes

"How to Use the "4 C's" Rubrics - This excerpt appears in the Buck Institute for Education's book, "PBL for 21st Century Success: Teaching Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity." Rubrics for each of the "4 C's" are in the book, and we offer guidance below on how to use them in a PBL context."

"Straight to the point …. We all make mistakes! Mistakes are OK, mistakes help us learn! However, sometimes, these mistakes can be avoided and last week I made a mistake that should have been avoided and I was (thankfully) held accountable to it."