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Michael O'Connor

As Children's Freedom Has Declined, So Has Their Creativity | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...clined-so-has-their-creativity

creativity psychology crisis Testing education

shared by Michael O'Connor on 11 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • In Kim’s words, the data indicate that “children have become less emotionally expressive, less energetic, less talkative and verbally expressive, less humorous, less imaginative, less unconventional, less lively and passionate, less perceptive, less apt to connect seemingly irrelevant things, less synthesizing, and less likely to see things from a different angle.”
  • During the immediate post-Sputnik period, the U.S. government was concerned with identifying and fostering giftedness among American schoolchildren, so as to catch up with the Russians (whom we mistakenly thought were ahead of us in scientific innovation). 
  • creativity is the central variable underlying personal achievement and ability to adapt to unusual conditions.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The Torrance Tests were developed by E. Paul Torrance in the late 1950s, when he was an education professor at the University of Minnesota.
  • Well, surprise, surprise.  For several decades we as a society have been suppressing children’s freedom to ever-greater extents, and now we find that their creativity is declining.
  • Creativity is nurtured by freedom and stifled by the continuous monitoring, evaluation, adult-direction, and pressure to conform that restrict children’s lives today.  In the real world few questions have one right answer, few problems have one right solution; that’s why creativity is crucial to success in the real world.  But more and more we are subjecting children to an educational system that assumes one right answer to every question and one correct solution to every problem, a system that punishes children (and their teachers too) for daring to try different routes.  We are also, as I documented in a previous essay, increasingly depriving children of free time outside of school to play, explore, be bored, overcome boredom, fail, overcome failure—that is, to do all that they must do in order to develop their full creative potential.
    • Michael O'Connor
      Michael O'Connor on 11 Oct 12
       
      I know of several local school districts that believe that their students cannot fail. How does this prepare a student for his/her real life? It does them great harm to continue to pass them on. They will never learn to overcome the impediments that occurs in life. You will also have an apathetic student on your hands! It is necessary to allow students to fail. Not to make them feel bad about themselves...but to allow them to understand there are second chances in life (sometimes) and that they are not beyond redemption.
  • In the next essay in this series, I will present research evidence that creativity really does bloom in the soil of freedom and die in the hands of overdirective, overprotective, ov
  • If anything makes Americans stand tall internationally it is creativity.  “American ingenuity” is admired everywhere. We are not the richest country (at least not as measured by smallest percentage in poverty), nor the healthiest (far from it), nor the country whose kids score highest on standardized tests (despite our politicians’ misguided intentions to get us there), but we are the most inventive country.  We are the great innovators, specialists in figuring out new ways of doing things and new things to do. Perhaps this derives from our frontier beginnings, or from our unique form of democracy with its emphasis on individual freedom and respect for nonconformity.  In the business world as well as in academia and the arts and elsewhere, creativity is our number one asset.  In a recent IBM poll, 1,500 CEOs acknowledged this when they identified creativity as the best predictor of future success.[1] 
  • judgmental teachers and parents.
Michael O'Connor

Teaching Visual Spatial Learners - Time4Learning - 0 views

www.time4learning.com/visual-spatial-learners.shtml

teaching learners time learning

shared by Michael O'Connor on 02 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • The truth of education is that most of traditional schooling methods are based on auditory-sequential instruction. This is unfortunate for visual-spatial students, who can begin to feel "dumb" in a regular classroom. In actuality, visual-spatial children are often highly gifted, but their classroom work may not adequately reflect their intelligence. Or, commonly, V-S kids will have incredibly high grades in subjects that appeal to their visual learning style, but might struggle to keep even passing grades in subjects such as phonics and math computation, where visual skills are seldom accessed. They also suffer exceedingly under the drill and review method of teaching. While continued practice and repetition is highly beneficial for auditory-sequential learners, visual-spatial students find it to be completely unnecessary. Once a V-S learner has mastered a concept, the learning is permanent, and does not need to be reviewed. Any type of review that highlights a visual-spatial learner's mistakes can be especially damaging to their self-esteem.
  • Although much of the traditional school environment is designed with the auditory-sequential learner in mind, there are things that teachers or parents can do to make learning more accessible for visual-spatial learners. The most obvious of these is the copious use of visual aids in learning. Any auditory instruction needs to be accompanied by something that the student can see with their eyes, or manipulate with their hands. Visual-spatial learners also usually grasp reading more easily if they are taught using the sight, or whole-word method, rather than with phonics. Pre-tests are another good idea for V-S learners, so that you do not waste time teaching them what they already have mastered. When possible, instead of writing out their work, allow them to represent their learning in visual and creative ways. Creativity is key for a visual-spatial learner.
  • The computer is an indispensible tool for a visual-spatial learner.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The computer takes some of this pressure off by allowing the keyboard to do some of the work. Visual-spatial learners also enjoy the computer because of its visual impact. In fact, both the computer and the internet were inventions by people who were very likely visual-spatial learners themselves!
Holly Johnson

Intro to Inquiry Learning | YouthLearn - 1 views

youthlearn.org/...intro-inquiry-learning

intro inquiry learning

shared by Holly Johnson on 03 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Holly Johnson on 03 Mar 12
     
    An inquiry-based learning approach is flexible and works well for projects that range from the extensive to the bounded, from the research-oriented to the creative, from the laboratory to the Internet. It is essential, however, that you plan ahead so you can guide kids to suitable learning opportunities.
Christen Cowley

F.A.T. - 0 views

fffff.at

art technology graffiti international

shared by Christen Cowley on 20 Sep 12 - Cached
  • Christen Cowley on 20 Sep 12
     
    The Free Art and Technology Lab is an organization dedicated to enriching the public domain through the research and development of creative technologies and media. The entire FAT network of artists, engineers, scientists, lawyers, musicians and Bornas are committed to supporting open values and the public domain through the use of emerging open licenses, support for open entrepreneurship and the admonishment of secrecy, copyright monopolies and patents. **** There is some adult language on here so you may want to preview some content before allowing students full access to the site.
Holly Johnson

Comics - 2 views

tewt.org/...comics

shared by Holly Johnson on 28 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Create fully animated comics online with Kerpoof. Choose from a library of scenes and characters, add animation, movement, as well as music and speech bubbles to bring a story idea to life. Extremely intuitive menu bar and helpful video tutorials make this tool quite useful. A key feature is a Teacher Account that allows teachers to register students and create classes where students can collaborate on creations
  • oondoo is another tool to create comics quickly. You can opt for a free
  • Pixton offers both a free account for personal use and an education platform with a unique pricing structure. There are a number of features provided with the Pixton education platform. Teachers can create a class, add students and assign a project all within the Pixton platform. Also, students can be signed up without and email account. Once created, comics can be printed, downloaded, embedded or shared online. The Pixton platform is also certfied for use on Smart and Promethean interactive white boards
  • ...2 more annotations...
    • Garth Holman
      Garth Holman on 28 Jan 12
       
      Hi its Garth
  • They prompt students to decipher meaning, purpose, and tone. They also provide creative possibilities for differentiated learning and expression. Moreover, successful cartoonists need a wide range of skills: researching, drawing, writing, computing, storyboarding, and designing. Cartoonists need to make their stories engaging and persuasive.
    • Holly Johnson
      Holly Johnson on 29 Jan 12
       
      There are some content standard ideas in this paragraph that can easily be targeted in a lesson!
  • Jennifer Bernal on 28 Jan 12
     
    this is a resource to find ways to teach to today's modern and techno savvy generation.
Kimberly Kinnan

Career Day at School with Tom Leibhardt - Implementing 21st Century Skills - 1 views

www.teachersfortomorrow.net/...school-with-tom-leibhardt.html

blog holman teaching learning

shared by Kimberly Kinnan on 28 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Creativity, not being afraid to take a risk, working with people and changing the world are concepts we hope our students understand when they leave our classrooms.  Tom helped express just how important those concepts are in the "real-world".  One reason that Tom enjoys his job is because everyday is different
Garth Holman

What is Curriculum Theory by William F. Pinar (Multiple Participant Book Review) | Joy ... - 1 views

www.academia.edu/...tiple_Participant_Book_Review_

Pinar Currere Research

shared by Garth Holman on 10 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • primary of which is the idea that curriculum is a “complicated conversation.”
  • Pinar argues that curriculum  –  or  currere    –  is an organic idea rather than a Socraticmessage that never changes (Pinar, 2011) Teachers must discover this currere for themselvesthrough methods of self reflection and self discovery.
  • Pinar has a good grasp of the situation stating “standardization makes everyonestupid,” and “to deny the past and force the future, we teach to the test.”
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • What knowledge is of most worth (pg. 210)? This is a difficult question that requiresreflection into what is the most at stake for us as teachers and for our students as learners.
  • The conflict within this text focuses on the loss of power and privilege of teachers over the teaching profession. Pinar (2011) states, "How could we have so fallen in the public's eyethat we are no longer entitled to professional self-governance, the very prerequisite for  professionalism?" (p. 69).
  • The inability for teachers to have a voice results in an environment in which the professionalism aspect of a professional group has been diminished to a non-existent level.
  • illiam F. Pinar‟s purpose in writing this book is to ask us [the student] to question this  present moment and our relation to it. In doing so, we are to question the very reason behind what it means to teach, “To study, to become “educated” in the presen t moment (Pinar, 2011)
  • Pinar vision of schooling is   to "understand, not just implement or evaluate thecurriculum" (Pinar, 2011). He urges educators to know what they are teaching. Reciting from a text and reading from a manual is not teaching in his opinion and it‟s not teaching in ours either. As students we are asked to brainstorm and use our imagination to picture the perfect scenario.Pinar is asking teachers to do the same
  • Pinar describes curriculum theory as: an interdisciplinary field in which teacher education is conceived as the professionalization of intellectual freedom, fore fronting teachers‟ and students‟ individuality (originality), their creativity, and constantly engaging in ongoing if complicatedconversation informed by a self-reflexive, interdisciplinary erudition (Pinar, 2011)
  • By tying the curriculum to student performance on standardized test, teachers were forced toabandon their intellectual freedom to choose what they teach, how they teach, and how theyassess student learning (Pinar, 2011). Failure to learn has been the result of separating the   WHAT IS CURRICULUM THEORY? 8 curriculum from the interest of students and the passion of teachers.
  • Contemporary is referring to a person in thesame field or time period as you. Pinar is trying to emphasize that we are not all moving at thesame speed when it comes to educating middle and elementary students
  • Teachers are then empowered tohave a voice to influence the curriculum in such a manner that positively contributes to studentlearning. Pinar is urging teachers to take back their classroom. Take the initiative and leadwithout boundaries. Instruct without guidelines and open your mind to learning indirectly fromyour students
  • Students are set up to fail but it is not really their fault.   They attend school where the system begs for learning to equate to test scores and they become “consumers” of  educational s ervices rather than “students” This system also encourages drop-outs becauseschools only want to teach students that have acceptable test scores which benefits the school‟s accountability. Students do not experience an environment that places importance on the development of ideas and critical thinking but rather the successful completion of atest.
  • Demonization of the teacher has been the result of the current political and economic powers have placed the teacher in an unimportant position in the educational hierarchy andassume that business leaders know more about the curriculum and teaching than the teachersknow themselves. Teachers have become “technicians” because of school deform and are encouraged to replace ideas and know ledge with “cognitive skills” that will fit into the  jobsettings of the future. According to Pinar, these skills result in historical amnesia, political passivity and cultural standardization.
  • He invites us to become “temporal” subjects of history, living simultaneously in the past, present, and future  –  aware of the historical conditions that haveshaped the current situation, engaged in the present battles being waged over the course anddirection of public education, and committed to re-building a democratic public sphere.
Jenny Sommers

How To Increase Higher Order Thinking - 0 views

www.cdl.org/...HOT.php

hot thinking questions education resources tools learning

shared by Jenny Sommers on 18 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Parents and teachers can do a lot to encourage higher order thinking, even when they are answering children’s questions
  •  “Don’t ask me any more questions.” “Because I said so.”
    • Jenny Sommers
      Jenny Sommers on 18 Oct 13
       
      Garth- this reminds me of our conversation of how we shut children's learning down.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Level 1. Reject the question.
  • Level 2. Restate or almost restate the question as a response.
  • Level 3. Admit ignorance or present information.
  • Level 4. Voice encouragement to seek response through authority.
  • Level 5. Encourage brainstorming, or consideration of alternative explanations.
  • Level 6. Encourage consideration of alternative explanations and a means of evaluating them.
  • Level 7. Encourage consideration of alternative explanations plus a means of evaluating them, and follow-through on evaluations.
  • When brainstorming, it is important to remember all ideas are put out on the table. Which ones are “keepers” and which ones are tossed in the trashcan is decided later.
  • Encourage Questioning. Divergent questions asked by students should not be discounted. When students realize that they can ask about what they want to know without negative reactions from teachers, their creative behavior tends to generalize to other areas. If time will not allow discussion at that time, the teacher can incorporate the use of a “Parking Lot” board where ideas are “parked” on post-it notes until a later time that day or the following day.
    • Jenny Sommers
      Jenny Sommers on 18 Oct 13
       
      I like this idea of the "parking lot" board. Students do need to feel like asking questions is ok- this doesn't stifle them but lets class continue on track.
  • Students should be explicitly taught at a young age how to infer or make inferences.
  • a teacher may use bumper stickers or well-known slogans and have the class brainstorm the inferences that can be drawn from them.
    • Jenny Sommers
      Jenny Sommers on 18 Oct 13
       
      I like this example.
  • How to Answer Children’s Questions In a Way that Promotes Higher Order Thinking
  • Jenny Sommers on 18 Oct 13
     
    interesting read- especially the section on "how to answer children's questions in a way that promotes higher order thinking
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