Fostering creativity and innovation in school children

It's good to find out what kids do really well. I thin k that is one of the main tasks of a teacher: to find the strengths in your students, and look for attributes other than the ability to sit compliantly in class, use neat hand writing, or fit in. Social awareness is important, but what other skills can be developed in children in the classroom that help them to learn really well, and be an asset in the classroom, rather than bored and mischievous. This UK program looks at these issues and provides some insights into how we can build on the talent of children and harness this to their best advantage.

http://www.smh.com.au/tv/show/make-your-child-brilliant/london/20110307-1bkol.html

How do we develop and teach creativity in higher education?

But first, what is creativity?

Let's start with Health professionals and creativity

Siddiqui (2008) has done some work with the health professions and creativity and she has some definitions of creativity in her paper (2008):

1. Amabile (1996) - 'a set of skills and attitudes needed in generating ideas and

products that are relatively novel, high in quality and appropriate to task in hand. '

2. Beghetto (2005) - creativity requires 'both novelty and usefulness'

3. Costello (2007) - creativity requires a 'future orientation' and requires problem solving ability.

4.'Noller (cited in Isaksen, Dorval, & Treffinger, 1994) - 3 parameters for creativity: knowledge, imagination and evaluation. '

5. ' A comprehensive definition of creativity can then be ‘the ability to make something new, whether a thought, or idea, an object, a product or a process, a work of art or performance, or an interpretation (Morrison and Johnston 2006). '

Source:

Siddiqui, Zarrin S, (2008). Creativity in higher education: Great expectations. 2nd International Conference on Assessing Quality in Higher Education, 1st – 3rd December, 2008, Lahore - Pakistan, http://uwa.academia.edu/ZarrinSiddiqui/Papers/78584/Creativity-in-higher-education-great-expectation

Itunes U - distributing educational content

iTunes U is another means for educational institutions to manage and distribute content to students. Institutions that become members of iTunes U receive access to a site that uses the facilities we already recognise from the Apple’s iTunes Store. Lectures, performances, demonstrations etc can be uploaded for broad dissemination or passord protected for particular classes to use.

Who is using iTunes U? See the Apple site for some examples.

If you have iTunes installed on your computer you can search for some music from the iTunes U channel. For example, you could look for Shostakovich's Festive Overture played by the Oregon State University, subscribe to the Open University's Start Writing Fiction class (audio and text), or listen to weekly 2 minute talks from Texas A & M university on engineering innovations.

There are pros and cons with all this of course. If you want to read some of the arguments you might try Gardner's blog for some discussion about ownership of content, and what Apple's agenda might be in setting up iTunes.

What next? messing around with technology

Esther and I are messing around with the technology. We're trying out Wimba's virtual classroom (video conferencing) right now.

See our thoughts:
http://techplayground.wordpress.com/

How are we doing?

Are we getting any better? have we improved on this? What do we really require to make this a more interesting model? If we talked to ALL the teachers about how students learn today, would it really change things? Or does the situation, lack of time and resources mean we can never make that quantum leap forward?

What are we watching now

Talk about one world - what are we watching now. Youtube has rated what we most looked at during 2009. What we watch affects what others watch - the viral nature of media and our viewing habits is interesting. how many times did you watch Susan Boyle sing her dream song, and what did you make of the roller skating babies?

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-you-watched-and-searched-for-on.html

The loop between Facebook and Youtube

You can get on the loop that keeps you connected from YouTube to facebook and back. Web 2.0 social networking - keeping you in the loop!

See: Youtube blog
Friday 18 dec 09

More on copyright and creative commons - ImageStamper

Another tool to help support your claim to authorship - eg over images uploaded publicly to the web - but only on Flikr at the moment. You provide the URL of the image and ImageStamper records the date.
http://s1.imagestamper.com/login.jsp

Audioswap - getting over copyright issues

YouTube has a solution if you want copyright free audio with your movie on YouTube. It won't be as good as the original 'Mambo' music for example, but it will provide you with some sound, copyright free.

Ownership, IP and Facebook

Facebook is now not claiming ownership of your content on its site, today. Concern from users of the system has encouraged the managers to rethink the wording of their terms and conditions for users.

Writing terms and conditions is a nightmare, one for the lawyers, but it has to be a document written in plain language so the everyday user can understand what it really means. The terms and conditions have to be written by those who are intimately aware of how users engage with the system. And most of us don't read those documents properly, unfortunately, unless there is a problem.

One of the difficulties with social networking sites like these is that information provided by users is mostly interlinked with others' content. If I write a comment on your blog or your Facebook wall, who owns that comment - you or me? If I leave that community, can I take all my messages with me, not only on my wall, but should I  also be allowed to rip them off your wall? Or do you have rights over that content as it resides in your space? 

Copyright and IP law is a minefield. Facebook has reverted to the old rules until they work this one out.

Electronic music - iPhone ocarina

It is extraordinary where electronic music is now going. An iPhone made into musical instrument. At first I thought - what's the point - but it is the social networking aspect and the recording ability that astounds me when you think about it. You can play your ocarina on your iPhone and connect with other players and listeners across the world. Web 2.0 technologies put to interesting use.  And then you can start an orchestra, and link with other musicians in real time - face-to-face and/or at a distance. 

Information about the digital ocarina.

And today on the SMH you can see a video of the instrument .

GROUP WORK AND ASSESSMENT

Group assessment brings its own problems and joys. The project on group blogging, with my colleague Jenny Nicholls, has been really successful. The third year drama students have enjoyed the task and the medium, and used the blogging space to move forward their ideas about playbuilding each week. Students worked on the blogs collaboratively out of class each week, and workshopped ideas together, face-to-face, in class time. And given that it’s much harder for students to successfully organise group tasks (like everyone else, they have very busy lives), the blogs helped with time management and building group identity. Now for the marking! And to see how the workload goes, and whether the students adhered to the guidelines which asked them to refer to the literature and reflect on the whole process.


GROUP WORK AND ASSESSMENT RESOURCES

Here are some great resources if you want to know more about group work and how to manage it.

Doing Group Assessment in Media and Communication
http://creative.canberra.edu.au/groupwork/Intro/Frameset.html
This site contains case studies, videos and text-based learning design information about group assessments. Issues such as group management, feedback, peer assessment and supporting technologies are addressed. There are keynote video interviews with Professors Sharon Bell, Ron Oliver, Tom Reeves, Jan Herrington and John Hedberg. The consortium responsible includes: the School of Creative Communication, University of Canberra (lead institution), School of Media Film & Theatre and College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, ICT Innovations Centre, Macquarie University and the School of Design, University of Technology Sydney.

Good practice: Assessment: Part B. Implementing assessment
http://www.uow.edu.au/about/teaching/goodpractice/UOW008515.html
This is a clearly laid out resource from the University of Wollongong.

Assessing Group Work
http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/assessinglearning/03/group.html
Again, another high quality resource. It has been developed by the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne. There's an accompanying PowerPoint presentation worth viewing.

Teaching with technology

It’s interesting that by exploring the use of technology in teaching and learning we not only evaluate what is important to us in the curriculum, but the process tends to encourage collaboration – of teachers with mentors, teachers with technical specialist, teachers with other teachers and librarians, teachers with students, and students with peers. Each drawing on the skills, knowledge and attitudes of others. That collaboration is not easy, and made more difficult because many are used to working at their teaching on their own. Working with others across disciplines and specialist areas can only make education richer, even if we are only thinking more about how and what we teach.

Here are teachers in different parts of the world having a go at teaching with technology.

Teacher Talk, NSW, Australia




Teaching with Technology, California, USA

What's the value of blogs in higher education?

Blogging shouldn’t be seen as an isolated phenomenon, according to Marcus Donnell (2006*), who comments on blogging from a journalist’s perspective. It’s part of a whole set of set of practices conducted over the net. Blogs happen in the midst of many different cyber cultures. We are not just thinking about communicating in the blogosphere, it’s blogging within myspace, Myflikr, My librarything, My youTube, My delicious, My skype, My secondlife, My podcasting, if you’re a student - My online tutorial, each with their own culture and norms. All various forms of personal publishing.

So if we start thinking about what is happening in a group blog – how does this subvert the norm of blogging? Or does it? Does a group blog just represent a series of personal blogs jammed together, or do we get some other synergy happening? Maybe this is dependent on the level of authoring rights of those contributing to the blog. Perhaps it’s also dependent on context.

In terms of students using a blog for a group project to document process, I wonder how much the blog will be viewed as a personal vehicle for expression, rather than a group effort. Still more monologue than dialogue?

In our project with the drama students, the group blog is replacing individual student journals. So while documentation is still a key outcome, the practices around that documentation are quite different. It is a public and shared form of documentation, no longer a private contribution submitted only to the lecturer. It requires interaction with peers – but whether this means students get to know their peers any better or establish stronger learning communities is to be revealed. Group blogging is a digital record on the web, available for scrutiny as it develops, a formative document - unlike the traditional student journal, printed out in hard copy and presented as a summary evaluation on demand.

No doubt we can expect to see some differences in outcomes.

I want to know if students share more ideas or resources using blogs as a digital record than they would just meeting face-to-face each week. We’ll know in about 6 months I guess!

Some student blogs to compare from the Vine Drama Project look like this:

JeMeGe, secondary students: entries are individually posted under a single account http://jemege.vineblogs.net/

Little inventors, primary students (Year 6?): each post is generated by the group , not individuals
http://class6m.vineblogs.net/



* O'Donnell, M. (2006). Blogging as pedagogic practice: Artefact and ecology. Asia Pacific Media Educator, (17), 5-19.

Video Games and Engineering

This is a great example of authentic, complex learning environments. In an advanced computing course at Northern Illinois University, mechanical engineering students work in teams to program and create video games. After creating their virtual models, students can enrol in another course and take their designs to the next level, and turn them into real products, real racing cars.

Group blogging

My colleague Jenny and I have been playing around some more with the group blog idea - testing things out so we can predict issues students might come up against this semester in their drama course, when they use blogs to help with the play building process.



You can see what we been up to here on the Timetoplay blog.






It’s interesting using a blog which is really a tool designed in the first instance for single authorship, as a group authoring tool. Once you introduce multiple authors, you need to think about the way primacy is given to the main author's entries - comments from others are nested away at a secondary level of access. The reader is directed to the first author entries, not the secondary comments. (Using the tagging function will be important if you want to find anything buried on the blog in a comment.)

If you’re working a group blog and all entries are of equal weight then everyone will need first author rights to post (upload files and rights to manage the site). Each author may tend to create new posts each time too, rather than adding an entry as a ‘comment’, so as to keep their posting at the highest level – not lost in the shadows of the blog. This will be interesting to track in the context of writing within a students' group blog which is assessed.



BTW: This group blog for Women in the Media and News has 50 authors - so anything is possible I guess!

Learning Spaces

A vision of students today

Have you seen this video about university students' views on their education? It begins with a comment by Marshall McLuhan. If McLuhan did say this in 1967, then the scary thing is the quote could’ve been talking about me – I was one of those bewildered children learning in that 19th century environment that McLuhan talks about – in a secondary setting - looking out the window wondering why class was so tedious. At the same time I thought almost everything we were studying was interesting. Just the school bit was boring and slow. When I went back into the classroom not too many years after leaving school as a trainee teacher, I naively wondered why the classrooms were the same. I’d expected radical change - after only about 4 years. That was in the 1970s. Thirty years later and it’s business as usual: in both the K-12 and higher education sectors development is patchy.

Chris Johnson and Cuprien Lomas in ‘Design of the learning space: Learning and design principles’ (Educause Review, July/August 2005, 16-28) talk about the way the physical spaces we build for learning reflect the values of the institutions that provide them. For instance, do large lecture theatres, where students sit passively day after day taking down notes, reflect the educational values we most want to encourage in students? Does frequent use of this space set up a pattern of dependence that is difficult to change? How many of us are modelling active, collaborative, independent thinking in lecture halls? Have you put yourself on the other side of that lectern lately? This is not to say that lectures don’t have a place – but their continued dominance in the expected everyday pattern of students in higher education astounds me.

'It's not the biggest, the brightest, or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest'. Charles Darwin (Source)

Blogs and wikis

A colleague and I are investigating group blogs and wikis for a third-year drama course. The following sites are interesting.

Blogs generally
Screencast on blogs, by Brian Lamb.
This screencast sits on Brian Lamb’s wiki, Beyond the Blog, where there are other links to information about social software.

Group blogs
We're looking at group blogs because students in the course are collaboratively making their own plays. A group blog might help with process. We've been looking at the traditional solo blogging software, but there is other collaborative software which might be of interest. Robin Good has some suggestions worth checking out.

Blog styles - examples
Journalism, group blog style: ABC Unleashed.
Politics around the 2007 election. Plenty of audio and video.

A poem a day: Gardner Writes
Low workload solo blogging. Gardner reads a poem by Donne and talks about his poetry. You can comment in text or audio.

Student site: Broadcasters of Tomorrow
Nominated for the Reuters Student Journalism Award 2007.
Lots of Youtube links.

About Robyn: Publications and CV

Robyn Philip
Educational developer/designer, consultant and higher degree research student


Contact:
Email: robyn-philip at bigpond.com
Web: http://creative-ed.blogspot.com
Academia.edu: http://qut.academia.edu/RPhilip

I've been an educational developer in higher education since 1991. I have extensive experience in educational design and development, particularly in the area of distance education and e-learning. I lecture in and conduct professional development workshops on e-learning and course design. I've collaborated with staff on projects from a wide range of disciplines, eg in the sciences, education, law, the humanities, business, nursing, engineering and linguistics. I am now studying for my PhD at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), after two-and-a half years in the Northern Territory at Charles Darwin University (CDU) working in the central academic and educational design unit leading a peer review of teaching project. My research now focuses on investigating how teachers foster student creativity in higher education.

Examples of previous projects:

• Educational development/design of online and on-campus diploma in Indigenous Creative Writing  for Charles Darwin University;
• Project leader for peer review of teaching and educational development (Charles Darwin University);
• E-portfolios for pre-service teachers and nurses (Australian Catholic University);
• Group blogging and collaboration for drama (Macquarie University);
• Curriculum design (Yooroang Garang, Health Sciences, Sydney University);
• User support (ALTC Exchange);
• Consultant Research Manager for the ALTC (Carrick) Exchange development project. Applied research with a team from the professional body, ascilite. The project investigated issues relating to the best methods for developing communities, and the sharing and reuse of educational resources across the Australian higher education sector.
• Program Manager for the LAMS@Macquarie Implementation Project (MELCOE, Macquarie University). The project supported and promoted the enterprise wide implementation of the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS). Activities included educational support for staff, evaluation, and the technical integration of the software within university systems. (2005 – 2006).
• Education Research Coordinator for the COLIS Project, Phase 2. Management of six research consortia from around Australia and one in the UK. The final report focused on user needs and systemic infrastructure requirements for e-learning in higher education. (2003-2004)
• Lecturing - Media and Methods (Charles Darwin University); Communication and Teaching Skills, School of Indigenous Health Studies (University of Sydney); Web Technologies and History Research, History and Media (Macquarie University); English for Academic Purposes (Deakin University).

Research interests:
I am currently enrolled as a PhD candidate at Queensland University of Technology, in the Creative Industries Faculty. My topic relates to fostering creative learning and teaching in higher education, and how digital technologies impact the process and outcomes. More generally, my research interests relate to the design of e-learning environments and learning spaces, and the sharing and reuse of educational resources.

PUBLICATIONS
Refereed journal and conference papers

Nicholls, J., and Robyn Philip, R. (2012). Solo life to Second Life: The design of physical and virtual learning spaces inspired by the drama classroom. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 17(4), 583-602.

OReilly, M., Lefoe, G., Philip, R. and Parrish, D. (2010). Designing for user engagement:  The ALTC Exchange for higher education. International Journal on E-Learning, 9(2), 251-277. Chesapeake, VA: AACE.  [abstract http://www.editlib.org/p/29499 ]

Philip, R. and Nicholls, J. (2009). Group blogs: Documenting collaborative drama processes. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 25(5), 683-699. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet25/philip.html

Philip, R. and Wozniak, H. (2009). Peer review of teaching practice and resources:

Exploring new spaces to embrace cultural change. In Same places, different spaces. Proceedings ascilite, Auckland 2009. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/procs/philip.pdf

Lefoe, G., Philip, R., O’Reilly, M., and Parrish, D. (2009). Sharing quality resources for teaching and learning: A peer review model for the ALTC Exchange in Australia. AJET, 25(1) [online journal] [html]

Philip, R., Lefoe, G., O’Reilly, M., and Parrish, D. (2008). A peer review model for the ALTC Exchange: Contributing to the landscape of shared learning and teaching resources. In Hello! Where are you in the landscape of educational technology? Proceedings of ascilite Melbourne 2008, Deakin Univeristy, December, 766 -775. [pdf] (Award for outstanding paper, at the 2008 ascilite conference.)

O’Reilly, M., Lefoe, G., Philip, R. and Parrish, D. (2008). The Carrick Exchange for Higher Education: Design Factors for User Engagement. In Proceedings of Ed-Media World Conference on Educational Media, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Vienna, Austria, 30 June - 4 July. (abstract)


Philip, R., and Cameron, L. (2008). Sharing and reusing learning designs: Contextualising enablers and barriers. In Proceedings of Ed-Media World Conference on Educational Media, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Vienna, Austria, 30 June - 4 July. (abstract)

Philip, R., Lefoe, G., O’Reilly, M., and Parrish, D. (2007). Community, exchange and diversity: The Carrick Exchange. In ICT: Providing choices for learners and learning. Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/philip.pdf (pdf)

Philip, R., and Nicholls, J. (2007). Theatre Online: The design and drama of e-learning. Distance Education, 28(3), 261-279. (abstract)

Philip, R. (2007). Adaptable and reusable learning designs: Will they be shared? In C. Montgomerie & J. Seale (Eds.), Proceedings of Ed-Media World Conference on Educational Media, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Vancouver, Canada, 25 June – 29 June 2007, 2980-2985. (pdf)

Fergusson, J., Gibbs, D., Gosper, M., and Philip, R. (2007). E-learning in schools: Making successful connections, Information Technology, Education and Society. 8 (1), 5-23.

Philip, R., and Voerman, A. (2006). Implementing new technologies across the organization: The LAMS@Macquarie Project, in P. Goodyear et al (Eds), Whose Learning? Whose technology?. Proceedings of the ASCILITE Conference, Sydney, 3-6 December 2006. (pdf)

Roberts, S. and Philip, R. (2006). The grammar of visual design. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 22(2), 209 – 228. (html)

Gibbs, D. and Philip, R. (2005). Engaging with E-Learning: Trialling a New Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) in Australia. In P. Kommers & G. Richards (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2005 (pp. 22-29). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. (abstract)

Voerman, A., and Philip, R. (2005). Walking Together: LAMS, Learning and Experience for Indigenous Students. In P. Kommers and G. Richards (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2005 (pp. 1350-1358). (abstract)

Philip, R., and Dalziel, J. (2004). Designing activities for student learning using the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS). Acquiring and Constructing Knowledge Through Human-Computer Interaction: Creating New Visions for the Future of Learning. ICCE International Conference on Computers in Education Conference, Melbourne, 30 November – 3 December.

Philip, R., and Dalziel, J. (2003), Implications of COLIS for Course Development: The need for secondary usage meta-data. Sustaining Quality Learning Environments, 16th ODLAA Biennial Forum Conference Proceedings, Canberra, September. (pdf)

Nicholls, J., and Philip, R. (2001). Drama online. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 17(2), 150-168. (html)

Parashar, A., and Philip, R. (1998). Online assessment and legal discourse: Dialogue and choice. In R. Corderoy (Ed), Flexibility: The Next Wave. Proceedings of the 15th annual conference of ASCILITE, University of Wollongong, December 1998, 549 – 559. (pdf)

Book chapters
Philip, R., and Nicholls, J. (2010). Drama, theater and e-learning, in S. Marshall & Wanjira Kinuthia,W. (Eds.), Cases 'n' places: Global cases in educational and performance technology, Charlotte NC: Information Age Publishing, (Ch. 20).

Fergusson, J., Gibbs, D., Gosper, M., and Philip, R. (2009). E-Learning in Schools: Making Successful Connections. In J. Zajda & D. Gibbs (Eds.). Comparative Information Technology: Languages and the Internet, (Ch 3, pp.33-48). Netherlands: Springer. http://www.springerlink.com/content/nh8m6347x6336127/

Bennett, S., D.Parrish, D., G. Lefoe, G., O'Reilly, M., Keppell, M., and Philip, R. (2008). A needs analysis framework for digital repository design in higher education. In L. Lockyer, S. Bennett, S. Agostinho, B. Harper, (Eds.), Handbook of research on learning design and learning objects: Issues, applications, and technologies, (Ch. 30), Hershey USA: Information Science Reference.

Gibbs, D., and Philip, R. (2006). Using the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS), a case study. In Transforming learning with ICT: Making IT happen. Ch. 8, 309 - 311. Pearson Education: Australia.

Philip, R. (2004). The education project,. In J. Dalziel, R. Philip & J. Clare (Eds), The COLIS Project, Ch. 2. The Macquarie E-learning Centre Of Excellence: Macquarie University, Sydney. http://www.colis.mq.edu.au/

Editorial publications
Philip, R., Voerman, A., and Dalziel, J. (Eds) (2006). The First International LAMS Conference 2006: Designing the Future of Learning. Proceedings of the First International LAMS Conference 2006, Sydney, Australia, 6 - 8 December. (CD and Web) http://lamsfoundation.org/lams2006/papers.htm

Dalziel, J., Philip, R., and Clare, J. (Eds) (2004). The COLIS Project. The Macquarie E-learning Centre Of Excellence: Macquarie University, Sydney. (CD & Web) http://www.colis.mq.edu.au/COLIS_CD/index.html

Edited papers
Gibbs, D., and Philip, R. (2005). Libraries, learning and LAMS. Synergy, 3 (2). http://www.slav.schools.net.au/synergy/vol3num2/vol3num2.htm

Gibbs, D., and Philip, R. (2005). Professional Educator, 4 (4). Australian College of Educators. http://www.austcolled.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2883&Itemid=0

Philip R., and Gibbs, D. (2005). Using LAMS in the classroom: New ways to engage students with curriculum. Connections. 53 (Term 2). http://www1.curriculum.edu.au/scis/connections/cnetw05/53lams.htm

Devonshire, E., and Philip, R. (2001). Managing change in flexible times: Reflecting on the role of the educational developer. Continuing the Odyssey. Proceedings of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia (ODLAA), September 2001, Technology Park, Sydney, NSW.

Nicholls, J., and Philip, R. (1999). Enriching the learning environment for drama students: On and off campus. Collected papers from the 14th Biennial Forum of the ODLAA, Deakin University, September.

Philip, R., and Litchfield, A. (1999). Learning and Teaching Online: A short course for higher education staff. ASCILITE 99 Responding to Diversity. Short papers of the Proceedings of the 16th annual conference of ASCILITE, University of Queensland, Brisbane, December.

Education
PhD candidate, Creative Industries Faculty (Queensland University of Technology)
Master of Arts (Creative Writing), (Macquarie University)
Master of Professional Education and Training (Open and Distance Education), (Deakin University)
Graduate Diploma in Education (Canberra College of Advanced Education)
Bachelor of Arts (Australian National University)