Monday, July 22, 2013

Why is Creativity Important?

Today I started a MOOC (Massive open online course) through Adobe, Train the Trainer.  The goal of the course is to help incorporate the Adobe platforms into curriculums and build creativity and digital media and visual story telling into education.  For more information see the overview.  The course asks during the first week to reflect on "Why is creativity in education important?"

I thought this would be a good way to get into blogging again. I fell creativity is important because it fosters risk taking.  When students feel they are being creative they tend to try something new, or stretch themselves to achieve the overall goal that they envision in their minds.  It gives them a chance to relax and learn with out realizing they are learning.  As they take risks to try something new students also build self confidence.  It amazes me when I watch students learn new technology so that they can produce a video, animation, or brochure for a class.  They aim to have it look like they envision regardless of their skill level.  I get to watch many of them try new techniques they never thought they would try.

Creativity also helps them research these techniques and learn to follow directions (at least in the digital world).  My mind comes back to the past PBL where the girls learned how to add close captioning to their you tube video.  They needed to figure out how to do this by researching it, following the directions, and this would not have been done if it wasn't for the creative video that was produce.  Many of them reflected on the skills they learned when they were being creative with the video.  The creativity gives a ownership to the students in their learning.