iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

"I have been very intentional in the public school teaching jobs I have chosen. First I was a PE teacher, now I am a gifted education teacher. I chose these jobs because I believe in active, hands-on, and joyful learning. I love being able to provide them with learning experiences not based on preparing them for toxic tests, but on how humans learn naturally outside of school settings. I also base many of my learning activities on my belief on the need for humans to create which I discuss more in The Magic of Making: The Human Need to Create:

The conclusion I came up with is that the human need to create is innate; and that too many people, starting during their childhood public education, stop creating. When they are given the opportunity, permission/invitation, materials, and methods, they fully embrace making and creating."

Jazzy, one of our high school seniors, already has experience building homes for others. After taking specialized construction and carpentry classes through Milton Hershey School’s Career and Technical Education program, she learned how to install flooring and doors, sand and paint drywall, and adjust electrical and plumbing systems.

For students like Jazzy, gaining experience in the trades can lead to future success. According to The Bureau of Labor and Statistics, construction careers, along with healthcare and personal care, will account for more than 5.3 million new jobs by 2022.

While the trade industry’s growing demand is encouraging for students who don’t plan to attend college, many students choose to pursue careers in the trades based on their interest in designing, producing, problem-solving and creating.

Chris Anderson talks to one of the most interesting TED stage speakers: education expert Sir Ken Robinson on creativity.

Dance — and physical activity — should have the same status in schools as math, science and language. Psst: it may even help raise test scores, says Sir Ken Robinson.

I recently visited the Sydney Opera House, to discuss ways that we might collaborate on their new Creative Learning Centre, set to open in 2021. While there, I participated in a workshop with a group of K-12 educators, coordinated by Frank Newman, the Creative Learning Specialist for the Opera House.


I really liked the way Frank sparked conversation at the workshop. We all sat around a big table, and Frank had scattered colored circles of paper across the tabletop. Frank asked me to make a few opening remarks about my book Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play. Then, Frank asked each of the educators to write down, on a colored circle, one word that stuck in their mind from my remarks. After that, Frank asked the educators to crumple their paper into a ball and throw it to someone else at the table — and to continue to throw the crumbled balls around the table.

This year the Hour of Code will be the biggest and best ever. There is so much I can’t wait to share, and it starts with a special video!

Creativity is our theme for the Hour of Code this year.

I recently launched a new blog series, Makerspaces A to Z.  You can read all about the letter A here, B here and C here. Thank you to all those who shared their thoughts about those posts using the #MakerspacesAtoZ hashtag.  Thank you also to those who shared their thoughts about letter D words there, as well.  Design was definitely the most talked about Letter D word, but there seemed to be endless options, and they all were great ones!

Letter D for me, represents Disobedient.

Many educators are concerned with managing stress and preventing burnout, well aware as we are of the demands of the profession and the high rate of turnover in schools. We know we need to sleep, eat well, exercise, and maybe meditate, and those habits are certainly useful in cultivating resilience, which is the ability to tackle adversity and emerge stronger than before.

But there’s another way we can cultivate resilience that’s often overlooked, which is to boost our creativity. Creativity unlocks inner resources for dealing with stress, solving problems, and enjoying life. When we are creative, we are resourceful, and we problem solve in new and original ways.

Turns out, it’s less about “teaching” creativity to children — and more about creating a fertile environment in which their creativity will take root, grow and flourish. Researcher Mitch Resnick, director of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT, explains how we can do this.

Below, you will see a breakdown of the 4 C’s. These infographics are located in Google Slides and they are yours to take for free. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m all about “teachers give teachers”, so steal away. All I hope is that this can help educators provide a greater depth of learning in their lessons to students. It’s cheesy – but that’s worth a lot more than money.

A new program introduced by LEGO Education gives an opportunity to teachers to bring more interdisciplinary resources in the classroom through its Master Educator program.

Most teachers will say that they are creative every day, citing how they respond to the dynamics of groups and situations which arise. However, it is good to have a reminder about the deliberate use of strategies to promote creative teaching / learning; refreshing our memories, or even meeting new options to give a creative boost to our classroom. Here are five you can use right away:

Creativity is learned through practice. While young children are inherently creative, the development of long-term creative potential depends on experience.

The “7 Components of Creativity” – as established by the Center for Childhood Creativity in the white paper, Inspiring a Generation to Create: Critical Components of Creativity in Children (2015)  – provides a framework of the key processes or skills that contribute to creativity, organized across three childhood developmental areas: cognitive; social and emotional; and physical.

The activities in Creativity Catapult each link to one or more of the components.

Over the past decade, millions of kids around the world have used Scratch to code their own interactive games, stories, animations, and more. This outpouring of creativity inspires us to continue to extend and improve Scratch, so that kids everywhere have new opportunities to express themselves creatively with new technologies.

Today, we’re launching Scratch 3.0, a new generation of Scratch that expands how, what, and where kids can create with code. As we’ve tested prototypes of Scratch 3.0, we’ve been amazed by the projects that kids have made — like a hedgehog that speaks French, a hippopotamus that dances to hip-hop, and a soccer game you control with your shoe.

Questions can fire the imagination and feed your creativity. In my research for The Book of Beautiful Questions, I found dozens of questions that can help in identifying fresh ideas, overcoming creative block, soliciting useful feedback, and getting an idea “out the door” and into the world.

However, the questions we ask ourselves about creativity also can have the opposite effect. They can undermine creative confidence or cause us to misdirect our efforts. Below are five questions that can be thought of as “creativity killers.” Take note of them now—so that in the future, you can stop asking them.

"Destination Imagination (DI) has been recommended by my supervisor for use with gifted students. I teach gifted students at two Title 1 elementary schools.

DI MISSION
To engage participants in project-based challenges that are designed to build confidence and develop extraordinary creativity, critical thinking, communication, and teamwork skills

DI PRINCIPLES
*Fun learning: Explore STEM/STEAM concepts in a hands-on environment

*Creative problem solving: Learn how to think, not what to think
Kid powered; team driven: Energize students to own all decisions, creations, and results

*Friendly competition: Motivate teams to reach for the stars, while also rooting for each other

*Global diversity: Encourage and celebrate differences in each other, and differences in ideas."

Be more chef.

It is a mantra I’ve adopted and taken to heart these past few months as my brother lay in a hospital, seemingly impacting the world more from that bed, then many of could do with bodies that were not full of tumors and cancer.

My brother was a chef in every sense of the word. He took the circumstances that life gave him and turned them into something wonderful and new and beautiful.

When my brother passed away a few weeks ago, my thoughts turned to my own four children. How could I help raise them to be chefs? How could I raise them to not follow the recipes of life, but instead make their own recipes for their life? But, it is not just my kids, it is all of our kids.

The question is, “Are we raising/preparing/teaching our students/children to be chefs or cooks?”

Design thinking provides a great structure for people of all ages to go through the creative process. The 10 activities I share below can be done with any age group, and they are a lot of fun!