Thursday, October 28, 2010

Teacher and Tech Oct 28, 2010

Presentations
A12 - Melissa, Ali, Megan
Jennilee, Tanis

A11 - Heather, Janette & Toshio
Claudia & Marla -  making a website
amber kevin ashley r- digital cameras in the classroom

Voting made worse by computers!

Creativity, Problem Solving, Copying and Remixing
  • what is needed to be creative?
  • is everyone creative?
  • why is creativity hard?
  • what is the difference between copying, remixing and stealing?
  • D A B F# G D G A - and the Rant against it


Clifford Stoll: 18 minutes with an agile mind.
Stephen Hawking: Asking big questions about the Universe
Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law

Sir Ken Robinson  ???

Jeff Han - TED talks - new interface

Literacy With ICT
  • at what level of the Cognitive Domain are we being creative? [Knows&Comprehends, Analyzes & Applies, Synthesizes and Evaluates]]
  • is it possible to be creative in the affective domain? [Responsibility & Ethics, Social Implications, Collaboration, Motivation & Confidence]
  • how can ICT assist in extending critical and creative thinking?



Fresh Brain
iPhone music - U of Michigan (thanks Steph)

Video/Mashups - the new essay?
    - samples from REC UNESCO projects

Thanks Amanda for this:
Steven Cameron, in his article, "Technology in the Creative Classroom", provides another point of view on creativity in Digital Natives. He points that creativity is an individual artistic quality that lies in those willing to take the time to pay close attention to detail. As a professor of creative technology classes, his trained eye can see a clear difference between those students who took the "short cut" in quickly cutting and pasting their projects together and those who actually spent time in manipulating their work into creative masterpieces.

While Cameron's skepticism of creativity may be of greater importance in his university classrooms, it is also a valid point for senior years teachers to keep in mind when seeking creativity from their students. Has the student quickly slapped together their 'creative' project, or is there something more, something fresh and original such as Palfrey and Gasser are alluding to, coming out of their digital work? This question is for the classroom teacher to decide when assessing their students' digital work.


Thanks to Samantha for this:

I, apparently, am a digital native.
Whoever decided that interesting fact is somewhat crazy.  In fact, I suggest that person come and sit in during one of my Teacher and Technology classes.  In this class of approximately 27 individuals, every person except for perhaps one would be considered a digital native.  Yet, for the most part, we can operate only the most superficial technologies available to us: social networking, email, text, and cell phones to name a few.  At first we thought that made us techno-savvy.  We were wrong.  At the commencement of the course, the professor woke us all up to our truly pitiful grasp on what we had, just moments before, considered mastered.  He wowed us by simply showing us a website that prepared formatted bibliographies, and stunned us by playing a video of jaw-dropping statistics relating to the expansiveness of the media in society.  To use an analogy, we have barely seen the tip of a monstrous digital iceberg that lurks below the surface of the facade that is a computer connected to the Internet.  I feel that the term "digital natives" may encompass far too broad a cross-section of people, and it implies something that the average individual cannot live up to.  Just because a person was born after a certain year does not mean that they were born with inherent skills specific to the technology of the time.

Thanks to Liana for this:
At the University of Liverpool, a year long project explored how learners improved in different ways by using digital creativity. Here are some interesting outcomes that they found:

-Students became engaged due to activities that made them personally interested
-Students saw the equipment and wanted to get involved (motivation)
-There was a sense of pride when it was time for the students to present their work to the rest of the classroom and at home
-Teachers noticed that their attendence record was improving in classes that were based on digital creativity activities (persistence)
-Students could take personal control of their learning
-Students were so motivated with their own project or activity that they asked to come in at lunch or after school to work on it
-They created their own finished products, and developed the ideas given to them
-They felt like they mastered a useful skill that they can apply in the future
-They found students to have a better social relationship with eachother
-All students were engaged because they were motivated by one another
-Students worked together productively which helped them develop people management skills
-Literacy was improved by the engaged students in the activity
-Animation was a great reusable resource for other learners
-Animation, video, and music software had a therapeutic value and encouraged personal relfection and developing insight
-Encouraged students to continue education and employment because these digital creative activities raised aspirations.
-With embedding digital creativity across the curriculum, students who had difficulties with certain subjects found helpful resources through technology
-Helped them understand and find a visual meaning for problems they encountered
Source: To read the entire experiment in detail go here:

1 comment:

Julie Carle said...

I support the findings in the research. I have had lots of fun with Xtranormal as an adult student returning to HE http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/4103 and more recently dealing with serious educational issues http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/4686