Creativity Matters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw9BTforFHU

Creativity Matters

What is Creativity?

Creativity is the ability to generate new ideas and new connections between ideas, and ways to solve problems in any field or realm of our lives.

Many of us think of creativity as making something new—like a new song, poem, painting, or novel. Creativity is certainly involved in making art. However, creativity is much more than that. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to work or solve problems in our daily lives. All people have the capacity to be creative. We can also nurture and increase our creativity.

Positivity, by Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph. D.The 6 Myths of Creativity

What is Creativity?

Creativity is a process that can be developed and managed.

Creativity begins with a foundation of knowledge, learning a discipline, and mastering whole brain thinking.

We learn to be creative by experimenting, exploring, questioning assumptions, using imagination and synthesizing information.

Linda Naiman, founder of Creativity at Work

Framework for 21st Century LearningTo be successful in the future, our students will need the 4Cs:critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

Daniel Pink is the guru of design thinking. He believes the future will be won by those who use the right side of their brains, the side that is emotional and creative.

John Cleese: 5 Factors to Make You More CreativeSpace/Time/Time/Confidence/Humor

SpaceYou can’t become playful, and therefore creative,

if you’re under your usual pressures.

TimeIt’s not enough to create space; you have to create

your space for a specific period of time.

Time:Giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original, and learning to tolerate the discomfort of pondering time and indecision.

ConfidenceNothing will stop you being creative so effectively

as the fear of making a mistake.

HumorThe main evolutionary significance of humor is

that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode more quickly than anything else.

Cleese’s Two Modes of Operating

Open: where we take a wide-angle, abstract view of the problem and allow the mind to ponder possible solutions.

Closed: where we zoom in on implementing a specific solution with narrow precision.

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy is a multi-tiered model of classifying thinking according to six cognitive levels of complexity, first published in 1956. Bloom's six major categories were changed from noun to verb forms in 2001.

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy puts into writing what art teachers have known

for years:

It is much more difficult - and a higher order of thinking –

to create something new rather than to apply evaluation to it.

Why should you post the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy in your art room?

You can use it as a visual reminder for yourself. You can refer to it when asking students to identify the levels at which they are working throughout a project and during critique. It is also beneficial to have it on display when you are evaluated by an administrator.

The theory of “loose parts,” first proposed by architect Simon Nicholson in the 1970's, has begun to influence child-play experts and the people who design play spaces for children in a big way. Nicholson believed that it is the “loose parts” in our environment that will empower our creativity.

Loose Parts Theory

“In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it.” Simon Nicholson, Architect

An environment which is rich in open-ended materials and real materials, invokes children to experiment, engage, construct and invent; invites them to tinker, to manipulate and to play.

The Loose Parts Theory correlates with the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education.

Imagination Playground

Resources for Loose Parts

Sir Ken Robinson’snew book.

How to Promote Creativity in Your Art Room

Model CreativityProvide Stimulating Environment that Supports Creativity

Find What Excites Your StudentsEncourage Idea Generation

Allow Time for Creative ThinkingAllow for Mistakes

Encourage Creative CollaborationTeach Self-Responsibility

Instruct and Assess Creatively

Creativity Matters

This presentation is available for your use at www.slideshare.net/nwalkup

nancywalkup@mac.com