Creativity 2.0
My reflections from Gary stager’s presentation titled: Creativity 2.0: The Quest for Meaning, Beauty, and Excellence.
First off, I have followed and read Gary for some time and really appreciate his passion, straightforwardness, and focus. He balances disruptiveness and constructivist learning with sound educational theory. He is not swayed or distracted (or impressed) by the novelty or shiny factor of educational technology. He sees personal computing as a natural and still somewhat magical (in a non-commercial sense) extension of learning. I was not dissappointed in his session today. His message was an inspirational one.
Our main, guiding question regarding technology should be “what are the children doing with their computers/laptops?” Learning with computers should be in the framework of Project Based Learning. Teachers should be guided by a respect that learners are competent, posing authentic questions and providing generous amounts of time, resources and access to expertise.
“A computer is an imagination machine, which starts with the ides we put into it and takes them farther than we could have ever taken them on our own.”
-Daniel Hillis
Gary starts soapboxing on red flag issues we are seeing in ed tech. (Not complaining…this is part of why I came.)
-Engagement is too often being confused with compliance. Just because the kids are quite doesnt mean they are engaged. Engagnent isnt something we do to others. It is intrinsic, naturally occuring, and cannot be fabricated.
-Too often we identity ourselves with our tools. We are not our tools…we are not Twitter-ers just as we are not hammer-ers. Educational computing is NOT shopping and should not require regular shopping. Software du jour ensures limited fluency and learning. If the tool requires instructions or a training session, it is worthless.
-Educators should be less thin-skinned about tech stuff. Should also be willing to unlearn, relearn, etc. Why are we still talking about 1-to-1 and personal computing? Its been around for 20+ years and isn’t going away. Why hasnt this completely changed everything about schools: from bell schedules, architecture, assessment, etc?
-Creativity 2.0 requires: teacher autonomy, curricular flexibility, respect for learners as competent, access to expertise, freedom, etc. Making things is better than being passive. Making good things is better than that. (Look up HBO shows: Masterclass, Neistat Brothers)
-The problems with problem/challenge based learning is the prompts. If the prompt is too grand you narrow the scope of experiences needed by the students.
Prompts need to be personal, local and solveable. Elements of an effective project?
purpose, time, personally meaningful, complex, allowing for serendipity, connected
shareable, will have an audience, access and constructive materials, questions worth asking.
-We should be evaluating student work with an artists aesthetic.Is the work: beautiful, thoughtful, personal meaningful, sophisticated, sharable, moving, and enduring? If not, it should be.
Overall, great session. It lacked some of the fire and sarcasm of previous presentations, but I still got my fill of snarky, smart comments. Entertaining. Inspiring. I will definately come back and reflect on this session.
