Category: creativity
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Avoiding risk and discouraging creativity
In his post “How to Kill Creativity” (in his blog “Slow Leadership”) Carmine Coyote shares the following graphic: Carmine is talking about business contexts in his post, but can’t we see ourselves in this graph in education– especially if we think of the NCLB defined “bottom line” as student test scores? The “creative ones” seem…
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Thinking and communicating visually
Cheryl Oakes commented about the SmartTech software program SmartIdeas recently. Here is an example of a product made with SmartIdeas. SmartIdeas looks very similar to Inspiration and the free, open source graphic organizer software CMapTools. My main question about these tools is, what differentiates them from similar graphic organizer software programs? I posted about concept…
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Encouraging Creativity
PBS has an excellent website designed to help parents and children explore and play to develop creativity. The subtitle is: “Nurture and Protect Your Child’s Creative Spirit.” I like the kaleidoscope activity, under “sensory stuff.” This website epitomizes the idea that to learn and be creative, we need TIME TO PLAY! Sadly, most schools provide…
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Garageband for Windows?
It appears Windows Vista (the next paid upgrade for WindowsXP) may include an application named “Monaco” designed to compete with Apple’s popular Garageband software program. Garageband is part of the iLife suite and can be used by even novice musicians to create original music scores. According to a post on Microsoft-Watch: Monaco will be aimed…
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Authentic education is always experimental
Miguel Guhlin and I have joked in the past if some people (naming no names) don’t intentionally “set themselves on fire” in the blogosphere in order to challenge people’s way of thinking, generate responses, get commments, etc. I do respect Doug Johnson and his ideas, so I am not levying an accusation here, but the…
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Let’s fight for recess
I don’t know about you, but one of the best parts of my elementary school experience was recess. It is not that I was not academically challenged at school– I certainly was in many cases. I attended K-3 at Murfee Elementary School in Lubbock, Texas, half of 4th grade at a Catholic private school in…
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Podcast38: Engaging the Heart and Singing the Song of the Student
This short podcast features several short interviews with participants in today’s workshop at ESC10 in Richardson, Texas, that focused on Curriculum and Instruction in the 21st Century. The first, and longer interview, is with Barbara Dorff, a passionate educator who believes our prisons are filled with people with brilliant minds who never had a teacher…
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New personal photo
I am pleased with a new photo my good friend Mark Umstot of Lubbock took back in December that I am now using on my Technorati profile and personal bio page: I am forgoing the previous computer generated image I used for Technorati, which I actually made awhile back with Hoyle Card Games 3 for…
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Inspirations
We watched a superb documentary film this evening thanks to Netflix called “Inspirations.” Famous dancers, choreographers, sculptors, musicians, painters, glass blowers and architects address in the film where their creativity and passion for their work comes from, how they view the world, and how they live their lives. This is a terrific exploration of the…
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Schools must embrace 1:1
Angus King, speaking to a group of Maine educators in April 2005, powerfully identified many of the reasons our school systems must radically change and broadly embrace 1:1 learning initiatives. The following is a slightly shortened quotation from his speech, from minute/second marks 9:55 to 18:20 on Bob Sprankle’s Bit by Bit Podcast from July…