The Creative Spirit!

My group and I had a blast making videos about the design principles and working together as student designers.  Dawn gave us freedom to design and produce videos in any format we wanted and as a result our group felt we could be creative and funny and we were all highly engaged.  It reminded me how important it is to give kids some freedom when you can.  All of the groups at Loudoun showed their understanding of the principles in very different video types but in my opinion it all worked because we weren’t stifled by rigid constraints.  

My thoughts about creative spirit lead me to visualize our STEAM lab at school.  The kids LOVE the STEAM lab and the freedom they have to create and be creative.  It certainly isn’t a free-for-all in the lab, however.  The teachers carefully design activities that have a purpose and a learning goal, but they design with creative spirit in mind: tinkering, imagining, experimenting and collaborating are at the heart of everything they do.  When I used to be a classroom teacher and I would pick my kids up from STEAM, there were times when I was a little jealous of all the “fun” they got to have.  I realize now that I could have designed instruction for “traditional” academic instruction with all of these things in mind too.  The creative spirit doesn’t just stay in the STEAM lab.  When I go back to the classroom someday, this will be something I want to explore.

Last week’s videos were a great way to wrap up 780.  I am looking forward to learning about information consumption and its role in schools as we navigate our way through the second half of the semester.