Promoting Creativity

Good afternoon, colleagues!

Teacher Toolkit posted an article on Thursday with 10 tips for promoting creativity. I loved what they had to say because it's essential for teachers to think "outside the box" to meet students where they "are right now." This is one of my current obsessions... I even blogged about it a few weeks ago! Because of my role as the technology specialist, I've been working on taking ideas and making them technologically realistic for my colleagues. That's what I'm going to do with this article as well!

How can you use technology to promote creativity?

1. Project-Based Learning and Genius Hour: I think these two go hand-in-hand. Utilizing the Google Suite would be very helpful here whether it's through collaboration and discussion, building a public website or blog, using e-mail to contact teachers or outside sources, storing and sharing information through Drive, designing presentations for data and other information... G Suite can make all the difference!
2. Create Opportunities for Creativity: Think about student choice and voice here! Adobe Spark Video is an easy way for students to be creative, but iMovie and Garageband are also great applications! Find a challenge or competition that students can join, whether it's for class or outside of the classroom. Have them share their work on their blog or through your professional Twitter. Have the students make connections outside the school that inspires them. 
3. Make Cultural Connections: Google Arts & Culture is a great way to bring art into the classroom. ARTE360 is a VR application where you can experience, first-hand, concerts, music, and artworks. Google Maps allows you to build a "tour map" of locations you "visited" to talk about the culture of the people in that location. 
4. Embrace Failure: Flipgrid is PERFECT for this! The reason why I would use Flipgrid is that it's video-based (instead of writing) and the students can see each others' videos. It's necessary, if your class is to embrace failure, that students can be both vulnerable and honest. The more students see others be exposed and authentic, the more open and candid they are willing to be. I think learning can be powerful when students learn from each other. They might listen to another student's failure and realize where they went wrong. Students can learn from someone else's mistakes! Students can also be the influencer for someone else!
5. Whole Brain: This requires you to create a lesson, or unit, that taps into working, declarative, and procedural memory. You want to chunk the information, provide context and connections, and design physical actions to accompany the learning. Explain Everything is useful for using the whole brain because students can explain the links, they are physically drawing and writing while creating a video, and they have to chunk their information into a precise presentation.
6. Create Time to Think: An application I would use here is Padlet. The online corkboard is an exceptional way for students to post questions, comments, images, or videos. Also, students can now leave comments on other students' post which is a great way for students to learn from each other. One thing I saw another teacher do was to leave the post layout as "free" so that students can move their post onto another post if there's a connection between them. It's an excellent way for students to see and design associations!
7. Teach Creativity: Start class every day with mindfulness (there are apps available on the internet) to set the creativity tone. Use Sketches for drawing and sketchnoting. Brainstorm (or do a project) as a class over Google Docs or Padlet. 
8. Celebrate with Pomp and Circumstance: Use social media platforms (Blogger, Instagram, Twitter, even Snapchat) to share what the kids are doing and what they are doing well. I use Instagram for my class to just post what the kids are doing. Recently a number of students have been asking about signing up for broadcasting next year. They're excited because they get to see the behind the scenes action, because they see the broadcast in class, and can catch up on missed broadcasts on YouTube. It makes my current students PROUD to be in broadcasting and proud of their accomplishments!

I hope some of these ideas are useful and inspiring! Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week :)

- Rachel

@historicalipad

My Teacherspayteachers website

Student Voice and Choice

Greetings colleagues!

When I started this new job four months ago, I was pretty terrified. I try to be organized and polished whenever I teach as I am NOT someone who flies by the seat of my pants. Teaching broadcasting was a WHOLE new thing, and I was making it up as I went for most of the first quarter. I now feel way more comfortable in this role as I'm figuring out what I want my students to know and do.

As a Social Studies teacher, I was always grasping for "wins" - good days, good class periods, and good moments. They did not often happen as I was a pushy teacher. I had high expectations. Students didn't get to goof off very often in my class. But now I'm a "fun" teacher - I still push and still have high expectations, but students get to goof off (ish) in my class. Students get to have fun because they are making up stories, they are creating videos, and they have an audience ready for their broadcast every week. Talk about student CHOICE AND VOICE!

I really thought about this the other day when a student said to me, "Mrs. Jeffrey - look at the board. You put the four of us (students) together. No other teacher would EVER do that!" I said to him, "Well, you do your work for me. If you were together in another class, would you not get anything done?" He said, "We don't have classes together, but I bet we wouldn't get anything done." So I said, "Every week you have to create a tangible product. If you don't get your work done, then you don't have anything in the broadcast." As I walked away from him, I heard him say to his colleague, "I've never thought about it that way before." WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER!

I will totally own that it's completely different being an enrichment teacher. I get to make up my curriculum because I have incredibly open standards (in fact, there are no broadcasting standards... I use Language Arts and theatre standards). This allows me to give students more choice and voice throughout the year. I really struggled with giving students voice and choice when I taught Social Studies. It's a difficult thing to do!

So how can you give students choice and voice in your classroom? Here are some ideas...

One time that I always tried to give students choice was when I had an "open era," i.e., we're covering between 1810 - 1860. I would want to know what they wanted to learn about and I wanted to know which applications they wanted to use. This was a perfect time to use a tic-tac-toe board or dinner menu. It wasn't entirely open-ended, but students had more say in their work.

For each broadcast, there is always one entirely original video. I give students theme options, but the main idea, the story plot, the script, the camera shots, and music are solely the students' creation. They can be quite fun to watch. For the rest of the segments, I often choose the topic, but sometimes I don't hear from staff members, so the students get to design their own themes. Even though the structure is set, students still write the script, design the camera shots, and create music. I always get to see and hear their voice throughout, and they still have choices along the way.

Find a way to make student's work public. This can happen at your own school! A brag board is where you have a student post their work and write about why they're proud of this work. Pair up with another class (whether on your team or not), and have them visit your brag board, look at the student's work, and leave a comment. This could be on a cork board in the hall or through a digital Padlet. Let the students be proud of what they've done so that other students can be proud of them too!

Our school has an advisory period, so each class shows the broadcast every week. I also post the broadcast on YouTube and try to remember to tweet out about it as well.





Let your students speak, both figuratively and literally in your class. Let them share their voice. But give them a choice in what they want to say as well.

Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week :)

- Rachel

@historicalipad

My Teacherspayteachers website