Nash+Adamson


 * PRE ASSIGNMENT FOR CRS 560 Nash Adamson **
 * 1) ** 5 Point Summary **
 * Torrance’s creativity index: ** The idea of a “creativity test” is ironic in the context of Bronson´s article, which identifies our current obsession with testing as a leading cause in the decline of creativity. Do we really need a test (see euphemism: index) to identify that multiple choice testing as a primary means of evaluation is a drain on creativity? I think not, and in this way identify more with Bronson´s conclusion than with his argument.
 * Creativity out of the art class and into the homeroom: ** Again, I find myself agreeing with Bronson´s conclusion, being that we need to incorporate more creativity into our instruction throughout the curriculum, but finding fault in his arguments. Having taught in a charter school environment in which the end of the year state assessment was the be-all and end-all of the curricular focus, I understand the crushing effect standardization can have on both teachers and students. But must we turn to our fear of rising competition (see: the young Chinese technological innovators) in order to justify bringing further creativity throughout our curriculums?
 * Transitions in creativity from early to middle childhood: ** Here I find that the research studies Bronson cites are of real use in understanding a phenomenon whose existence is obvious but causes or unclear. Having been a teacher in primary, middle and high school years, I have seen the ways in which creativity falls throughout this time period (I especially find it lacking in self-conscious middle school students). But what exactly to look for in early childhood (Bronson cites free play, project based learning and, more interestingly, the creation paracosms and early experiences with opposites) is illuminated through academic research in a way that can give educators a more concrete sense of what teaching towards creativity might look like.
 * Sir Ken Robison on what our schools train students for: ** I thought one of the most insightful lines of the presentation was when Sir Ken Robison argued that our current schools, which are seen primarily as feeders and preparers for university education, are in fact designed to create another generation of college professors. While funny on the surface, his depiction of what college professors do and what they are (walking brains, more or less) has enough truth to it to raise a number of insightful questions: what skills, outside of critical thinking alone, should our school be teaching for. The list seems too long to include here and could make for an interesting class discussion during session


 * Robinson on what future schools should train for: ** I buy the argument detailed above that our current schools are training students, at best, to be walking brains (see: college professors). I fear that many of our schools are not even doing this. But those that have already achieved what in today´s world should be considered to be a bare minimum critical thinking requirement should begin to engage in a variety of creative activities inside and outside of the arts to create the kind of entrepreneurship and innovation that will almost certainly be required in the future.

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YOU NOT ONLY PICKED GREAT POINTS TO PONDER BUT CRITICALLY ANALYZED THEM. I DO AGREE AS WELL WITH KEN ROBINSON (AND HIS LINE IS NOT NEW) THAT WE ARE TRAINING KIDS TO BE COLLEGE PROFESSORS. I DO THINK HE GOT THAT LINE FROM HOWARD GARDNER, ACTUALLY.

The diploma program, which puts so much emphasis on developing necessary skills for university level research, seems to be pointing students more towards becoming the walking brains required to become university students and professors. I do not actually mind this orientation generally, as I think the students are ready for this type of work, but would like to consider how to incorporate creative activities more generally into the diploma setting. IT IS MY BELIEF THAT HAVING STUDENTS GRAPPLE WITH OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO CREATE A BETTER WORLD BRINGS A DEEPER LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING TO THE CONCEPTS OF THE CURRICULUM. CASE IN POINT--THE MATH PROBLEM WHERE ALL GROUPS CREATIVITY ABOUNDED, DID LEAD TO A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF D =RT. WOULD YOU AGREE? I DO HOPE THAT CLASS READINGS, DISCUSSIONS, AND ACTIVITIES PROVIDED STRATEGIES TO ADDRESS YOUR LEARNING GOALS FOR THE COURSE.
 * 1) Discuss how you nurture creativity in your students currently. Provide concrete examples. I teach both MYP humanities and Diploma History. One thing that I love about the MYP is that it gives me so many chances to build creativity in my students (and in myself as a teacher). While one category of assessment, the written task, allows for creativity only within the somewhat confined arena of critical thinking, we have been given the opportunity also to asses conceptual understanding, technical skills and presentation skills with a variety of tasks ranging from Claymation videos to Prezis to public awareness campaigns.
 * 1) ** Finally list three understandings or skills you would like to learn in this course on Creativity. **
 * 2) How to incorporate creativity into advanced level courses at the end of high school.
 * 3) How to use a wider variety of technology to bring creativity into all of my courses.
 * 4) How to incorporate creative and technological projects without sacrificing content knowledge


 * Ted Talk Response - Isabell Allende on Passion**

FINE COMMERCIAL. BERY CLEVER HAVING RIP-OFF TABS.


 * Group Definition of Creativity**

GREAT VISUAL METAPHOR TO REPRESENT FACTORS IN YOU DETAILED DEFINITION OF THE COMPLEXITY OF CREATIVITY. **Assignment 1 - Reflection** I was skeptical at first about the value of doing a scavenger hunt. It seemed as though it might be a good team-building activity, but I wondered if it was sufficiently academic to form a module in a Master´s Degree Program. My skepticism was quickly assuaged when the activity itself began. Ordinary objects began to convert themselves into answers, but only through the creative and imaginative process of seeing them in another light.While the list at first seemed to be impossible, we ended up finding a great deal of the items without so much as having to leave our apartment. All of a sudden, objects that we saw everyday became inspirations for Mozart, creative solutions or problems to be solved. This created significant insight that can be taken into the classroom. The pre-assignment asks us to think about ways that we encourage creativity in the classroom. As most teachers are, I was pre-disposed to think of the times when I bring in an art-related project. Any other use of creativity beyond that seemed somehow vague or incosequential. The scavenger hunt project helped to give me a personal definition of creativity to supplement the useful one provided in class (Doing something that is both origin and useful). The personal definition for my own classroom relates the experiences we had together on the hunt: to look at things in a new way that affects the way you saw them to begin with. In this way, I can see how I might inspire creativity in situations ranging from a Socratic discussion to an essay and back to the hands-on projects traditionally associated to creativity. I AM PLEASED THAT YOU FOUND A BENEFIT IN THE ASSIGNMENT. AS I SAID EARLIER, CREATIVE GRAPPLING WITH A TOPIC BUILDS UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONCEPTS IN BOTH A PERSONAL AND INSIGHTFUL WAY. I SEE YOU ALLUDED TO BARRON AND EISNER (SEEING THINGS IN A NEW, CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS, ETC) - A LITTLE MORE CONNECTIONS TO THEIR FACTORS WOULD ENHANCE YOUR COMMENTS.

**Assignment 2 - Lessons** Nash Adamson

Lessons Using Creativity Inspiring Strategies


 * Lesson #1**
 * Discipline:** Diploma Level History
 * Strategy:** Morphological Matrix


 * Objectives:**
 * -** By using the morphological matrix to stimulate improvements, produce a wide variety of options and explore a wide variety of combinations, students will be able to:

- Create alternative histories for the Paris Peace Conference and the signign of the Treaty of Versailles.
 * -** Understand the nearly infinite number of alternative histories that could have taken place in the 20th century in particular and throughout history generally.
 * -** Approach historiography with the conviction that many alternative historical narratives can describe the same sequence of events. THIS IS A GREAT UNDERSTANDING
 * -** Better understand personal attributes of leading figures in early 20th century history.


 * Description of the Strategy:**

A morphological matrix is a graphical organizer that is used to allow creators to see an increased number of possibilities, playing with seemingly unrelated connections to form intruiging and original results.

1. Introduce students to the task at hand 2. Brainstorm guidelines for creating and utilizing a morphological matrix. 3. Establish norms 4. Generate matrix, using relevant historical details from the previous weeks´lesson. 5. Fill in optoins 6. Students: begin creatively connecting Teacher: Check-in and encourage student progress. 7. Students complete their creative connections, write there alternative history and present for the class by posting on the class website (einsteinhumanities.weebly.com) SOUNDS DOABLE AND A SOURCE FOR CREATIVITY. THEIR PRESENTATION IS ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO CONNECT THEIR IDEAS AND EXPRESS THEM IN UNUSUAL BUT EFFECTIVE WAYS.
 * Steps**:


 * One Potential Paris Peace Conference Matrix:**


 * World Leader || Negotiating Partner || Policy to be considered || Political motivation ||

This activity will take place in our second week of studying the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles. The goal of our study is to allow students to answer the following unit question: To what extent was the Second World War avoidable? This question relates to the Treaty of Verasailles in the sense that many historians have argued that the harsh terms of this particular treaty directly lead to the rise of Hitler and the outbreak of the Second World War. Students are often able to make a causal link between the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the outbreak of the Second World War. What requires true creativity and imagination is to consider //alternate histories// based on real historical events. Imagining the world leaders at the Treaty of Versailles through a role playing activity will warm students up to the possibility that the particular negotiating partner, policy to be considered and political motivation could lead the same leader to make a very different proposal. How might our world be different today if we had avoided the Second World War? Imagining alternative history through the use of a matrix is a great way to begin pondering the world we live in now, and creating an alternate world we might have inhabited. SO WOULD YOU HAVE THEM BRAINSTORM IDEAS FOR EACH OF THE COLUMNS AND PROCEED FROM THAT POINT BY CHOOSING THE PARTIES AND A PERSPECTIVE OR MOTIVATION? SEEMS LIKE THERE ARE A LOT OF POSSIBILITIES HERE.
 * Implementing the Activity:**
 * Implementing the Activity:**

Students are to form partner groups, fill in the matrix, and then decide upon a creative way to present their alternative history to their classmates. Possible presentation formats could include a Prezi, a short story, a video, a comic book, a speech etc.
 * Assessment/Follow-up:**

Being now in the process of implementing this lesson it has become possible to begin the process of reflection on how I might do this differently in the future. To begin, I would certainly keep the activity in future years. I might, however, provide more guidance on the final presentation format, as many students gravitated towards making a poster because it is the easier option even though it might not be the most expressive. For this reason, I might provide students with more guidance towards what I would like to see in a finished product, while still allowing some room for creativity in terms of choosing their own presentation medium. YES, LET THEM HAVE A CHOICE IN DEVELOPING THE SCENARIO BUT PRESENTING IT IN A WAY THAT BEST ACCOMPLISHES THE PURPOSE(S) YOU ARE AIMING FOR.


 * Lesson #2**


 * Discipline:** Middle School (MYP) Humanities


 * Strategy:** Discovery Learning


 * Objectives:**
 * Students will gain a more sophisticated understanding of current events by engagin in discovery learning by "messing about" in a Classroom Interest Center dedicated to the world today.
 * Students will see that the skills of asking questions, forming / testing hypothesis and drawing conclusions extent well passed the Science Classroom and into the humanities curriculum and beyond.
 * Students will make connections between various current events stories, and between current events stories and their own lives.

Too often in the social studies / humanities classroom we rely upon rote memorization. This usually involves the teacher presenting information directed towards concrete answers, and the students studying the information in order to regurgitate the information on an exam. The use of discovery leaning generally, and its combination with Classroom Interest Centers in particular, turns this traditional strategy on its head. Instead of given students //the information// the students are instead given the //resources// necessary to inspire their own creativity and find their own answers. This particular classroom learning center will consist of a dozen or so Newser.com stories from current events that range from the bizarre (Serpent Pastor Dies of Snakebite) to the more bizarre (Face Eater in Miami?) to the hard hitting (Masascres in Syria). Students will be tasked with linking the stories together in a coherent narrative that relates the stories to one another and (sophisticated respones) and to themselves. In doing so, students will be able to play with different theories for how these stories could connect to each other and will be likely to arrive at different conclusions based on assumptions made throughout the process. GREAT IDEA AND USE OF A STRATEGY CALLED FORCED CONNECTIONS.
 * Description of the Strategy:**

Students have been studying current events once per week throughout the course of the year. While the format has changed from week to week, one common denominator has been that students have either been given or chosen a particular news story to present to their classmates. In these presentations, students were allowed creativity in terms of medium of presentation, and often in the selection of the story itself, but the basic elements of the story have been provided in the sense that the narrative was given by the article or video. To implement this activity, students will first be introduced to the idea that they will be presenting a news story, but unlike previous stories they will have to discover the narrative by playing with varoius combinations that might arise from playing in the Classroom Interest Center. In this way, students will link together a wide variety of different stories to make a fun and often fantastical narrative that explains contemporary world events from their own perspective. This ought to provide a memorable way for students to cover current events. I AGREE Students will be assessed on the quality of their news broadcast, which can be delivered orally, written in newspaper form, videod or audio recorded. Students will be able to choose the presentation medium and will be given a rubric relevant to their choice.
 * Implementing the Activity:**
 * Assessment/Follow-up:**

- Pre-Assignment, group definition of creativity and math problems are included above.
 * Assignment 3**

In order to spark a discussion on the blocks we put in front of ourselves in terms of creativity, I presented my students with one of the activities that we tackled together in class: the rope challenge. To an even great extent that we adults, students looked upon the problem as if it were impossible. The ropes were too far away to connect without breaking the rules of the game, and many students were satisfied to call the whole situation a silly impossibility. HOW INTERESTING AND JUST THINK HOW THEY ARE RESISTANT TO CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS. In this way, students found themselves in a situation similiar to Joshua in his box. The one or two or three solutions that they tried at first didn´t work, and repeating them certainly didn´t create a better result. I found this to be relevant to my teaching generally, because I often find students inside of Joshua´s box when addressing seemingly easier to solve problems. For example, when given a creative project students will often makde the same presentation or topic choice as their teacher or a best friend. Their appears to these students to be only one solution, or at the very least an easier way, and past experiences with trying new stragies haven´t helped to liberate them. What I found interesting about my implemenation of the rope game was that after a significant (and seemingly infinite) period of creative blocks, one student was finally able to come forward and think outside the box. Just as we had done in class, this particular student tied the rope to his belt loop, walked over, and grabbed the other. As soon as this one solution was encountered, it seemed as if there were myriad possibilities at our fingertips. What this activity went to show is that as soon as we see one way out of the box, we see that solutions exist and are worth searching for. In doing so, we usually find that the box contains as many ways to escape as it did to enter in the first place. GREAT STORY HERE. I AM SURE THAT YOU COULD USE THIS EXPERIENCE AND CONNECT IT WHEN THEY NEED TO DO OUT OF THE BOX THINKING TO CONSIDER A PROBLEM IN THE CONTEXT OF A CURRICULUM UNIT OR TOPIC. I was immediatly drawn to Isabel Allende´s discussion of Passion (with a capital P!) because I have enjoyed reading her fiction in the past. Anybody who can construct such creative characters in novels should have something important to say about creativity in the real world. Her first interesting point of distinction was that between somebody who is //nice// and somebody who is a //character//. Nice people are fine, she points out, and are make for perfectly adequate ex-husbands. But characters are those we want to surround ourselves with, both in fiction and in real life. And there is something, at times unnamable, that these characters possess that both separates them from the merely nice and friendly and also exemplifies the creative and passionate spirit that we ought to strive for. Allende continues her discussion of Passion and creativity generally by focusing on those qualities that make amazing women come alive in her novels. These qualities are related to a number of passionate and extraordinary women that she has had the pleasure of knowing. The passionate and creative spirit that she herself has comes to light through her humor and insights throughout the talk. In particular, the talk inspired me to bring a number of discussion points up in the Socratic Seminar. One thing that I noticed is that we never discussed creativity in fictional characters, and I thought it would make for an interesting discussion to bring up this other creative element. Discussion of what followed is included below. GREAT. JUST WHAT I WANTED TO HAPPEN. 1. Regarding Isabel Allende´s Ted Talk, I wondered how we might find creativity in our favorite fictional characters and what this might teach us about fiction in real life. 2. Regarding the //Six Myths of Creativity//__,__ I asked the following: debunking the myths was based on research that sought to take a glimpse at creativity ïn the wild,¨meaning in people´s everyday lives outside the confines of a traditional experiment. I wondered, what are other ways to look at creativity in the wild? Furthermore, I wanted to ask if debunking these myths helped people to think of themselves as creative. When we have a particular idea of the creative person (think: Einstein with his crazy hair and tongue out working on an impassioned, self-imposed deadline) we might think that we don´t fit into this box. When we think about the creative person more generally, is it easier to imagine ourselves as creative agents? Does this in fact make us more creative?
 * Joshua´s Box:**
 * Ted Talk Analysis:**
 * Socratic Discussion Entry Card and Reflection**:

Having brought these discussion questions to the Socratic Seminar and compared notes with other participants was certainly helpful in my own learning process. What I took away from it more particularly were the ways in which I could use this particular style of Socratic Seminar, the Fishbowl, to encourage my students to develop an ear for listening to each other. G REAT. I LOVE THE FISHBOWL IDEA AND KIDS EXPLORING IDEAS WITHOUT THE TEACHER BEING TOO INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS. HOPE IT WORKS FOR YOU. I find that I can usually get students to listen respectfully to me, but when another student begins talking they either start to tune out or talk themselves. I have been frustrated by previous norms I have imposed, as I have found that they can work but need constant re-inforcement. Using the fishbowl style Socratic Seminar will allow me to teach students the explicit skills they need to participate in student-lead discussions, which is a skill they will need throughout University and into their careers. EXCELLENT.