The Fourth Screen

Talk about a dream for the classroom--the Fourth Screen. Nokia has put together a nice little documerical (my word) that describes the evolution of media from the First Screen (the movie screen) to the Fourth Screen (essentially their telephone).

Picked up this video from the blog Education Innovation. I'm not sure how this blog has managed to avoid my radar, but I'm sure glad I stumbled on it. There's some really thought-provoking writing taking place here. Check out the write up about the Fourth Screen video below.





Technorati Tags: education| learning | innovation

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Vote for My Presentation on Creativity on Slideshare

World's Best Presentation Contest

A Dose of Inspiration (Hopefully)

Below is my entry into the Slideshare World's Best Presentation Contest--Cultivating Creativity in the Classroom. It is not exactly what I hoped it would be. The original font that I used did not make it through the upload (it was a great one too--I think it changed the whole tone of the slide show). I also had to remove several slides because the PPT file was too large (75mb!!) to upload.

I'm not sure how big a role standardized testing plays in the everyday life of a teacher in other states, but here in Ohio no curricular decisions are made without mentioning the words Achievement Test. Even in my school district, which continues to have success on the test each year. This presentation is meant to be a quiet wake up call for teachers. Though it barely scratches the surface of what we know about creativity, it will hopefully awaken a few folks to the idea that preparing for state tests doesn't have to consist entirely of paper/pencil drill and practice drudgery. It's possible to teach many concepts by allowing students to create products that display their learning. Another hope of mine is that teachers will begin to think of themselves as creative and begin to search for ideas in the world around them with the hope of improving their instruction.

I also wanted to provide a few links to the authors that I quote in the presentation:

• Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative by Ken Robinson
• Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko
• A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger von Oech
  

Plus, creating this presentation was my effort at being more creative. I've been presenting at conferences for years now and over time my presentations have improved significantly. This is the result of my reading a couple books, watching a certain movie, and reading a really awesome blog. Here are links to those:

• Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson
• An Inconvenient Truth starring Al Gore and his amazing slideshow
• Presentation Zen
  

Cultivating Creativity in the Classroom

view presentation (tags: creativity teachers classroom education)



Technorati Tags: education| Slideshare | creativity

Looking for the Second Right Answer in Social Studies

It was becoming more than I could take. Each morning and afternoon of the school day, the sound of an unhappy sigh from my students would briefly fill my classroom. Curiously, it always accompanied the announcement from me that it was time for social studies. My students loved learning about science--the subject comes easy to me and I am able to teach it in a way that most students find interesting and fun--and that part of class was often enjoyable for them.

Social studies was different though. I often struggled with how to make concepts like history and geography interesting to my students. Throughout the past school year, I refashioned many of lessons and introduced new projects, all in an effort to make the subject more interesting. My efforts were partially successful--social studies became a little more interesting to a few more students.

A good teacher is continually looking for new approaches to teaching subject matter. We often find them in workshops or conferences. Over the past few years my best ideas have been inspired by my reading of business books. Books like A Whole New Mind, Made to Stick, and now A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger von Oech. Originally published in 1983, the book is still incredibly useful for those looking for tips to be more creative. It has a lot of useful information for more than just business people; in fact, it's every bit as useful to just about any one looking for ideas for how to be more creative. Which brings me back to social studies...

I have to admit that although I enjoy learning about history, I am not very good at remembering what I learned. Too often, I learn about historical events through reading about them or watching a television show. This is far too passive as I'm not really thinking deeply about what I've seen or heard. This depth of thinking is also what is missing from my teaching of social studies. I give my students some guiding questions, have them read the textbook, and then I try to engage them with a visual slide show that summarizes the reading. Students are learning that their job is to search for the right answer. Who did this or that? When did this event occur? Etc. Which brings me back to the A Whack on the Side of the Head...

von Oech states that to be more creative, we should look for the second right answer. One way to do this is to ask questions that solicit more than one answer. Another is to ask questions in a different way. This got me thinking about the questions that I ask my students to answer when learning about history. So often they are the type that require students to find the right answer. So I've been thinking about how I could get them to look for the second, third, or even the tenth right answer. What I've found is the mental lock of teaching history as a collection of right answers is something that I am going to have a difficult time breaking free of. I wanted to include some examples of questions that require searching for the second right answer in this entry, but I'm having a difficult go of thinking of them.

This will be one of the big challenges that I face this coming school year--including more opportunities in social studies to develop creative thinking through the asking questions in different ways.

Technorati Tags: education| history | creativity

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David Byrne's Playing the Building

I've become consumed with creativity lately. So when the following video showed up on Bloglines from on Wired.com, I had to check it out. Creativity suggests originality, and I would have to say that Byrne's idea is beyond original.

What interests me most about it though is that it does not seem to be a project that would require a great deal of knowledge and skill to pull off. Through trial and error, this is a project that a highly creative and motivated teacher could do with his/her students (though on a much smaller scale). Imagine how engaged the students would be! John Dewey would be proud!


Technorati Tags: education| Wired | creativity

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