Comments on: Creativity vs. creating

By: Megan Golding

Megan Golding — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:05:05 +0000

Interesting play on words, Sylvia. I, too, am a huge fan of students creating. Some resources I use in this process are: * Instructables * MAKE magazine * I Make Things * Garrett's Bridges for balsa bridge design The abstract learning is necessary, but it's the concrete stuff like working in a darkroom that sticks with kids, I think.

By: Bill Knauer

Bill Knauer — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:05:43 +0000

An important difference, indeed. It’s interesting that schools tend to treat subjects that have always focused on hands-on, concrete creation – such as woodworking, metal shop, electronics, cooking, even arts to some extent – as the poor step-sister/brother to the abstract, academic courses. You won’t even find most of these courses offered in most independent schools because there’s no time (i.e. value) to teach them. Apart from the fact that building a table or soldering a circuit board or writing a computer program can be a powerful learning experience, these acts of creation also carry with them a great deal of satisfaction in that they produce tangible results.

Of course, in the case of using some of the 2.0 tools, the line between creating and reporting can sometimes be blurred. A teacher at my school recently had his class use stop-motion animation to illustrate cell division, and he got some really creative responses. While the students have not “created” in terms of the science, they have learned the tools and processes to produce a video, some of which were very clever. An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elz8PLsb6DI

By: Jim Cottrell

Jim Cottrell — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:10:09 +0000

Good point. We want our students to be able to do things as well as report on things. Growing up, I was always making something and couldn’t wait until school was out to get back at it. I think Gever Tulley, who started this “tinkering school” has a good idea.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/202