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'We do not need to teach creativity, but rather inspire its daily practice.' This opening sentence is intriguing yet inspiring to me. As said in the title, this article introduces 18 apps to support students developing creativity at different thinking stages. The writer also suggests some practical strategies which could be incorporated in our daily teaching practice. Nevertheless, what strikes me more is the reminder that we, as a class, school, or community, need to build a culture of trust in the first place to cultivate culture of creativity and innovation.

What a great article about creativity.  What I loved is that the article states that schools do not need to teach creativity.  Schools need to foster it by providing students a safe place to take risks and providing them tools that make that risk taking possible.  Creativity is about finding solutions to problems using one's own ideas and thinking skills.  Students can do this when given the power and opportunities to do so.

Like Chris, the opening to this post caught my eye. "We do not need to teach creativity, but rather inspire its daily practice." Ms. Darrow's article captures the importance of creating a school that values it's students, encourages them to take some risks, and lets them practice these skills with abandon. With support and coaching from teachers, students can work through the steps outlined in this article using technology to streamline the process, help them develop real life/career skills, and appeal to their interest in digital media. I like how Darrow labels this process; there are clear steps to increase understanding. Collaboration or group work can use this format as well, group members' jobs are easily created with the resulting structure. It also creates natural places to scaffold the process for individualizing learning in a classroom full of all kinds of learners. Each activity we do in a class may not need all these steps and some may need more, but I plan to keep this article in mind as I tweak my courses this summer.

I was looking for an article that had to do with blogs, but ran across this article and while it isn't on blogs - our topic for the week, it might help answer a question that has come up in discussion. The where-when-why to use blogs in the classroom question. This post talks about building expectations for a classroom as a group, teacher and student together. Why not do this with blogs? We have all said that they have value in the classroom - maybe the students can help us figure out where they would get the most value from them in their work/assignments. She contrasts that with a syllabus that "perform[s] as a living, negotiated document." (p. 41) It begins with these four questions: What topics or areas are of greatest interest to us as a class? How can we adapt the classroom space to be conducive to cultivating enhanced communication? How can we best connect our readings and discussions to our everyday lives?

February 21, 2013 By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning Almost everyone agrees that student presentations benefit the presenter in significant ways. By doing presentations, students learn how to speak in front a group, a broadly applicable professional skill. They learn how to prepare material for public presentation, and practice (especially with feedback) improves their speaking skills. (Much of what we want for our students is to work, respect, support, find the good in one another, have fun and use web tools together! Highlighting the peer evaluative piece was one I am doing my best to work on. Great resource!) ~Tara

Tara, Good find. A nice way to get more students engaged. An interesting, approach to student presentations. The author does a nice job of describing advantages, as well as disadvantages, to requiring students to critique their classmate's presentations. The image of the "comatose" classmates in their seats as yet, another presenter tries to impress the teacher is comical, yet accurate. The students doing the critiques also had a vested interest as it represents a portion of their grade. A significant statistic was that," Seventy-three percent of the students agreed or strongly agreed that completing the evaluations made them pay more attention to the presentations. " A final point of interest is that students were clear in not wanting their classmates critiques to have an impact on their grade. Tom

"What do you think about alcohol? Lots of teenagers get involved in binge drinking and using alcohol in an abusive way. What do you think about alcohol?"

This site overviews the importance of using media in instruction and provides some Web 2.0 tools to achieve animation for teaching.

This is a very cool article. I loved the comparison of a teachers introduction of education background is compared to a computer " It's like going to Dell's website to shop for a computer and getting nothing but photos of the factories and descriptions of how the computers were built." Use a video to introduce ourselves and explain all we can do in the classroom. We should be making them look forward to what they can do during the year with me. Very Cool.

This is a very cool article. I loved the comparison of a teachers introduction of education background is compared to a computer " It's like going to Dell's website to shop for a computer and getting nothing but photos of the factories and descriptions of how the computers were built." Use a video to introduce ourselves and explain all we can do in the classroom. We should be making them look forward to what they can do during the year with me. Very Cool.

17+ Things to Do with your Online Photos

How do we use such a great and simple tool in the classroom? Well here are some ideas for student use.

This teacher makes a really strong argument that you should not feel that you have nothing important to say. This is the way to make some strong networked relationships. I like her quote "This has led to many great conversations with other educators about teaching issues." Blogging has connected her to peers throughout the world. I find that being an online educator is lonely so this may be the way to go to share resources and to discuss with others that share our online world.

I really enjoyed reading this article because I'm feeling the same excitement as the author did when she first began blogging. While I'm just learning how to "officially" blog, I have been using Edmodo with my students as a way to connect with my students outside my classroom. It allows us to communicate and ask questions to one another outside of normal school hours, yet in a more structured classroom like forum, unlike Facebook. But because it works similar to Facebook, the students love it and don't mind logging on and doing their assignments. One day when I was out sick, I was able to log on an have real time discussions with my students. If they had questions about the assignment they were able to ask. They can also turn in their assignments via Edmodo instead of waiting for the next day/week. My feelings are if the students are into it, then it's something we need to be doing as well to keep up with them. Teachers who use Web 2.0 tools such as blogging have an advantage over those that don't because these are the social networks that students know and are familiar with. Also, the author of this article points out the fact that teachers have a new way of connecting to each other and share ideas. From what I remember when I was younger, the traditional teacher's only way of communicating and sharing ideas or concerns with other teachers were via phone or before/after school meetings. I don't know how often that actually happened, but now with blogging you can share your information any time with any body.

This is a link to a video of a high school that uses only Project-Based learning PBL, a teaching/learning style where students create projects to demonstrate their learning of the objectives set out by the teacher. It goes through the process of how to set up PBL projects as teachers. It's a decent introduction to the process: something to pique one's interest. At the end there are links to other videos with more information about PBL.

Project-based learning has come to the forefront of education as it is being used to assess what the students know and how they can use the knowledge in the "real world" to problem solve. The approach by the school to implement PBL into their curriculum goes directly back to state standards. I thought the video was well informed and I was impressed with the 60-65 times the students speak in front of others (public speaking).

Go inside Manor New Technology High School, part of the New Tech Network of schools, where an unwavering commitment to an effective schoolwide PBL model keeps both students and teachers motivated and achieving their best. More to this story.

This article outlines the notion of flipping the classroom to ensure there is more time in class "doing" your discipline and working on skills together, rather than "listening" or "looking" at how it is done. Being selective about what media you ask students to consume for HW, having them do blogs or discussion posts as HW and then using class time to work in groups and go deeper with the analysis of bias, perspective, sourcing, etc. is a great model. If we want to push the thinking further on the media literacy, we need to have class time to do this work with them.

You do not have to join to view some of the basic features of this site. However, if you do decide to join you gain access to lesson plans, illuminated texts, discussion groups and so on. All you need to do is participate in the site - if you add a lesson or make comments in discussion groups you accumulate points. I joined because I was very interested in making illuminated manuscripts with my students using either powerpoint or the adobe group materials. I was really impressed with Prezi for the power of that tool but sometimes I just want student work to stay within our classroom and not be shared on the web so I like the idea of the illuminated manuscripts.

Merits of Project-Based Learning. This is where I want my teaching to head back to. In career and technical education I did a lot of projects with my kids. Not so much lately and really want to move back to this because I really believe that it works!

It made me want to do more than I do. I cannot afford to use "time" as an excuse. Good learning from PBL's takes time and there are many benefits including providing applications to the teaching and answering the question "why do we need to learn about this?"

This is a topic that creates a similar feel as the value of neat handwriting on paper for students at school. Is it worth debating and reaching a decision about? Or do we just proceed to use paper as the need arises in the classroom? Students are exposed to the use of paper and digital media and resources on different levels. Where do we start saying less or more paper OR digital devices are the way forward?

Get tips and ideas every day in May for Teacher Appreciation Month on how you can thank your favorite teachers -- and support them throughout the year! Credit: Illustration by Walter C. Baumann Tip # 19: Do a Presentation of Thanks Using PowerPoint-Karaoke Thank your teacher by organizing a fun improv class activity.

The author of the article reviews a new training software release "Articulate Storyline". The program combines several elements: video, dialog balloons, and questions with multiple scenario resolutions for starters. Each scene is very short. The video action stops, and text balloons appear showing the dialog of the scene. Then three possible resolutioins to the scene appear. The user chooses one, and the video continues. It works like an improv play where the audience chooses how each scene will end. Although it's designed as a tool for the teacher, I can see where students would love this, too. The reviewer is definitely not unbiased, but there are links to samples that showcase just what the program can do.

"Technology has changed the face of the earth, how we think, how we relate to each other, and even what we think about.""Technology enables us to not only do things differently, but to do things we couldn't even conceive of."

Throughout the ages of educational ideas and philosophies teachers have been big fans of having their students keep a journal. Journals are kept in language arts, foreign language classes, and I have seen them in science classes. Students don't particularly like doing them unless they enjoy writing. If given a choice between keeping a journal in their spiral notebook and keeping it online, I would wager that a majority of students in this digital age will prefer to keep it online. So why not give them the choice and tool of Penzu.

Kevin Jones summarizes the difference between Web 1.0, CMS, Web 2.0, Social Media, and You Tube.

My Carnigie's story maker is an excellent tool that can be used for teaching creative writing to your students. With this tool, students will be able to create a story in minutes, with animation if desired, and then share their story with somebody else or even create a print out.  My Carnigie Story Maker is extremely user friendly and students can get started within minutes and won't need much training to do so.  Students will be able to get their creative juices flowing as they practice their English Language skills and if you happen to be a Foreign Language teacher, this site would be great for your students as well.