Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
Teach to student’s individual needs. Agree with Ken Robinson that students are taught to fear failure and are taught out of creativity. This is a good advocacy for art and education. There needs to be a shift in how education is perceived by it’s supporters, the community. Also, schools need to truly have a comprehensive education and realize the importance of the arts in balancing out students educational abilities.
We have no clue what the world will look like in the future, and we are teaching them for the unpredictable. How then, especially when we are teaching students for the unknown can we expect the students to never fail. In fact, we should be teaching the opposite. That failure is not labeled as bad, but as a part of the process. What if students didn’t get grades, but progress charts, demonstrating times of growth and times of stagnancy. It could also be perceived that in order to succeed, you need to fail. You need to be down, before you can go up. Therefore is perhaps “failure” a pre requisite for success, and a sequel to success. So in this case, we shouldn’t be teaching kids that being wrong is a negative connotation. We must teach students that being wrong is a part of the overall process, and is necessary in order to creatively think and solve problems. Here is the application of where students get educated out of creativity.
I see this as a great opportunity for me to use art education to enhance a student’s ability to learn and their overall outlook on learning in general. It would be so nice for students to just be able to experience the process, instead of being afraid of it, and trying only to achieve a goal by jumping from peak to peak and skipping the valleys and dips.
All art is, is solving problems. It teaches students to see a problem and try to devise a solution. This problem solving and creative thinking ability is something that is desired by employers and helps students to think on their own, conclude and contribute to brainstorming. Our entire advertising/product system is based upon artistic/creative appeal and how a Designer can sell a concept to any one individual persuading them to believe that they need this new product. What if we could have all of our schools and teachers acting as these creative designers?
It is important to me when Ken Robinson talks about students feeling like failures or that they aren’t good at anything simply because what they are good at is not valued in the education system. We need to encourage students to excel in all areas of education, particularly in creativity.
I also watched a video on Siftables
I was blown away at the creativity of the computer building blocks. What a great tool to help teach students how to do many processes. An easy, mess less way for students to practice mixing colors, creating a musical composition or practicing math problems. Here we see the implication of creativity as Ken Robinson was talking about. Technology and the “brain” of a computer are meeting the tangible desires of human nature. I think this is great and for the longest time I have felt that the two need to bind. Students can learn by doing and using technology. Fantastic.!
I have watched a couple other videos: Stefan Sagmeister Art project
Twitter: This was interesting for me to watch and gave me more of an idea of the applications of twitter. I particularly found the following interesting. First off, he talks about following hunches. Which also ties to what Ken Robinson said about not fearing failure, and taking risks and being creative. So…Follow hunches and see where they go…if you don’t you’ll never know what happens.
Twitter Implications:
Can be used in real world events… you can spread emergency messages fast. News and organizations can send updates or tweets to followers.
Twitter creates a network and a sense of belonging to those who are distant. People use twitter because they want to know what it feels like to be at the particular event. For example, what is going on at a particular concert or, what to do in an emergency such as was described with the Atlanta Gas deficiency. People can twitter where gas was and how much there was. It goes beyond keeping up with family and friends. It lets others know what the needs are, where the needs are and where the answers are and resources.
Students can use twitter as a search engine, and can also post information they find so others can use it and add onto their knowledge base.
How I’m trying to Save the World now; Bill Gates: How do you make a teacher great?
This was an interesting video to watch. Bill Gates describes the importance of good teachers, and says, the good teachers are decreasing. And the education that people are getting is getting weaker. Economy is only providing opportunities to those with a better education, we need to level out the playing field. There are high rates of high school dropout. Having great teachers is a key thing to a great education and lowering the dropout rates. There are a lot of variations of teachers in schools. There are a few great teachers and a lot of not so great teachers. The bigger job should be to create top notch teachers to teach students. If we had top teachers we’d be a bombin’ educational system.
How do we make more top notch teachers?
Teaching quality after 3 years hardly changes and evolves. New teachers are changing and evolving and learning. Keep changing, keep learning. Good teachers keep kids on their toes, keep every student involved, interested and engaged. It is important to tell teachers when they are doing well. Camera’s in classrooms help to record your classroom teaching skills, and can help increase your teaching, and use it with peers to help them get better at teaching too. Then have videos available for students who are behind too. Self evaluation can be a great way to increase your skills. So overall, we as educators need to keep up, keep learning and keep engaged.
I am pretty amazed overall at how all this tied together. Check out too Daniel Pink and his book A whole New Mind.
