My own search for creativity brought up a question though… where had my creativity gone? Why did I need to find it again? I think my educational and work experiences had ‘normalized’ it out of me. My quest for grades and advancement had led me down a road that limited my thinking to a ‘right’ way. I have given thought in the past to the question of how one can teach and encourage creativity and how my own experiences could have been better. Then, just this past week, I literally stumbled upon an article asking exactly that question. While I don’t think the article answered the question very well, a couple of clicks later it had led me to a post by Michael Michalko titled Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School about Creative Thinking.  I thought it was a great list and encourage reading his notes that go along with each item. The basics are:

1.    You are creative
2.    Creative thinking is work
3.    You must go through the motions of being creative
4.    Your brain is not a computer
5.    There is no one right answer
6.    Never stop with your first good idea
7.    Expect the experts to be negative
8.    Trust your instincts
9.    There is no such thing as failure
10.    You do not see things as they are; you see them as you are
11.    Always approach a problem on its own terms
12.    Learn to think unconventionally
13.    Bonus: Creativity is paradoxical

So my next question is: How do we teach such that these things are the takeaway from the lesson?

Spring Tulip

Found in a friend’s garden on a lovely, sunny, spring day. Pure Joy!

Last night, I happened upon a video from TED. Simple words but a powerful story about providing the space needed for girls to learn that reiterates the adage that if you education girls, you educate the world.

I thought I would pass it on…

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. ~Henry Ford

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. ~Leonardo da Vinci

Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study.  Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life.  ~Henry L. Doherty

When the student is ready, the master appears.  ~Buddhist Proverb

Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.  ~Vernon Howard

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.  ~John Lubbock

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. ~William Arthur Ward

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. ~Mark Van Doren

In the world of the future, the new illiterate will be the person who has not learned how to learn. ~Alvin Toffler

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; Words without thoughts never to heaven go. ~William Shakespeare

Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Continue to learn. Play with abandon. Choose with no regret. Laugh! Do what you love. Love as if this is all there is. ~Mary Anne Radmacher-Hershey

I just cant seem to wrap my head around this. It seems to me that not including computers and technology in the classroom puts students at a great disadvantage. Computer skills, to my mind, are a great method for integrating problem solving and creative thinking skills. Communicating via computer is also a necessity in just about every workplace I can think of. Denying students such fundamental skills seems almost as disastrous as not educating them at all.

Then we have all the studies that point to technology helping students improve their classroom experience. One of the primary influences for my recently completed thesis was a study out of Scotland showing that using a Nintendo DS game dramatically increased maths attainment (story link). My research also looked at the integration of digital spaces into more ‘traditional’ educational television shows. The online playground that accompanies PBS’s Sid the Science Kid TV show offers a wonderful ‘hands-on’ opportunity that potentially enhances the learning possibilities of the TV production dramatically.

While I can understand technology that is not used well detracting from a classroom learning environment, the evidence seems to point to inclusion being better that abstention as a whole. Therefore, when I was directed to an article on Good Education titled Should 3-Year-Olds Learn Computer Programming? my answer was ‘why not?’. I think the article is right – it will help integrate technology as a problem solving tool, introduce computers in a way that may improve the number of students later studying computer programming, and be a fun, educational activity.  I wish programming had been this much fun when I was learning!

This short video was produced as my culminating experience project at the Vancouver Film School in 2003. Watching it now is both a reminder of just how much work went into it and a glimpse of how much I skill I have gained in the interim and how much I still have yet to learn. I hope it is enjoyed for what it is – and that it may spark future potential.

Zip in the Window

Ready to Play

Squirrels in the Garden

Hiding

Helping Mum in the Kitchen

The Girls are Home for my Party

Mt Olympia Sumit

View of Mt Diablo North Peak from Mt Olympia

View from the Top of Mt Diablo North Peak

Upper Berry Creek Falls

Middle Berry Falls

Lower Berry Creek

On the Trail

Pausing on the Decent

Storm Damage

Coming Down the Steps

Wild Mushroom

Chill Piper

Hello There!

Clydesdales and carriage

Sheep

Sheep dog at work

Hawk 1

Hawk 2

Hawk 3

Dancer

Warming Up 1

Warming Up 2

Here Comes the Band

My Fellow Photographer

Highland Coo