Developing the Creating Mind with Glogster!

I created this Glog using the website Glogster. This glog was created to help students see the differences between the two Greek city-states. Students learn about the ideals of each city-state, their governments, and history.

Glogster is a great interactive tool for sharing a variety of information. Glogster allows you to create "posters" where you can post video, audio, links, and images, together, to share. With Glogster, you can put all types of media about any topic on a single page. You can use a variety or design tools to help you create an interactive and engaging resource for your students.

There are many great ways to use Glogster in the classroom. Teachers can create glogs to share information with students. You can share information that appeals to all types of learners and allows students to use different skills to access. A teacher-created glog can help students see how information in a topic is connected. Glogs can also be used to teach supplemental material or summarize material. It can be a great resource for students that are absent or for review. You can use Glogster to help you create project-based learning activities and science experiments for students to follow. Glogster can add another level to your instructional practice.

Glogster can also be used as a student product. Students can synthesize information for any subject area into a dynamic, interactive learning experience. Glogster posters can be created for English assignments as a complement to a writing piece or in lieu of one. It could be an interesting way for students to explore themes, characters, and plot lines. They can create science projects for a fair, and presentations for social studies. You can also have students create glogs as review which they can share with other students. Students can use what they have learned to teach others.

Glogster is a powerful learning tool for both students and teachers. Teachers can transform their classrooms and students can show their learning in creative ways. Glogster can reach all learners and engage all senses.

Creativity In the Classroom: The Students Perspective

When you ask students what they want from their teachers, they inevitably say "I want to do fun things!" While every activity and lesson can't be a fun-filled adventure, there are many ways to incorporate fun into e classroom. When I talk to my students about creativity in the classroom I get a lot of requests to do projects and hands-on activities. My 6th grade students are always wanting to draw. Most ask if an assignment includes an art piece or ask if they can draw something instead of writing. My current student population has the least accessibility to technology of all of the classes that I have taught in the last 5 years. This is the first year that I haven't been bombarded with requests to use computers.

The limited accessibility to technology has led to a lack of interest, or thought about, technology. The school that I work in has limited access to current, working technology. When my students think about creativity, they talk about it in the realm of their physical reality, theater, art, and dance. My students really want to be able to express themselves and not feel judged. They want to be able to use their strengths to convey understanding. They see value in doing something that they can be proud of and feel confident about.

When I ask my students about what they would change about their learning environment, some wish the school had more computers, but this seems to be low on their list of priorities. Others ask for more field trips, and some have no request at all. My students have expressed the main concern for safety in school. Many live in rough neighborhoods or have to travel through them to get to school.with safety being the most immediate need, technology doesn't even become an option.

In this challenging school environment, how do I help introduce students to technology and all of its wonders? It makes even considering using technology a challenge as I have to consider what tech I personally have available to use and how do I plan with the 2-3 different devices I have available for a project for 55 students? This has been a challenging year for me and instructional technology. There is so much that I cannot do. I want technology to be a part of my students educational life. I want them to learn how to create with technology, how to use the Internet critically, and how to do research. My students own limited experience with technology makes it that much harder. I believe that if technology is introduced to them in a meaningful and exciting way, they will crave it at every turn. The question becomes, do I introduce what limited technology I have and risk not being able to fulfill its full promise, or do I hold back until I can give them the full technological experience?

Are schools killing creativity?

In a word... Yes. Schools are killing creativity. After watching a TEDTalks presentation by Sir Ken Robinson about the state of creativity in public education, the message is becoming clearer for me. It's not that I don't value creativity in the classroom, I have just fallen victim to the prevailing reality of "academic inflation," a term Robinson used to describe how degree requirements for jobs has increased over the years. The job you could get with a bachelors degree, now requires a masters degree, etc.. I spend so much time thinking g about how I need to prepare my students for the 21st century workplace; but what if my students are not meant for the traditional workplace, and how do we know what that workplace will look like?

Robinson also equated the education system to a strip-mining operation. When put into context, that is exactly what we are doing. We are strip-mining students' minds for strictly logical and practical development. The classroom is meant to help students get the right answers for the standardized tests and be able to write the appropriate response to writing prompts. This TEDTalk was given in 2006. At that time I would say that this was a public education problem, the lack of creativity. I have many friends that work in "independent" schools and they seem to be facing the same challenges in fostering creativity in their classrooms today. The schools that were created to be independent from the restrictions of federal guidelines are falling victim to the same constraints as public education, all for the purpose of enhancing our future workforce. Creativity is getting lost in education.

There are many Web 2.0 tools, apps, and technologies that allow for creativity to use in the classroom. In order to develop our students' intelligence, thinking back to Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, and the diversity in intelligence, we need to include more opportunities for creativity. I like using movie-making apps like iMovie, MovieMaker, and digital storytelling software to help students tap into the visual and kinesthetic parts of their brains. Digital media is a perfect outlet for creativity. It engages all of the intelligences. Digital media can be a powerful tool if used in meaningful ways. Giving students this option can help us engage the student that is disengaged and give them a way to perform and excel using a nontraditional format.

Digital media alone cannot solve the problem of limited creativity in the classroom. Curriculums need to allow for opportunities to include creative options. We need to re-prioritize what is most important for real, quality learning and what will serve students most in the future. Do we need more factory workers and direction-followers or do we need more thinkers and trailblazers in our world? 

Ken Robinson - "Do Schools Kill Creativity" on TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) website (available online)

The Power of Multimedia Presentations

The Egyptian Afterlife on Prezi

Multimedia presentations are a great way to engage students. Multimedia presentations provide a multi-sensory experience that is bound to connect with all types of minds described in Howard Gardner's Five Minds For The Future. When students are able to access information on multiple levels, they are more apt to retain the information and be able create their own connection to the material. Video, audio, and text, when combines, provide a way for students to make powerful connections to the things they learn.

We all have those students that come alive with visual or audio presentations and those that crave the text. Multimedia reaches all of those students. When we endeavor to help our students develop a disciplined mind, we want them to master skills. For the synthesized mind, we want them to be able to take information from varied sources and put it together in a new way, to form new ideas and pathways of understanding. Using multimedia to present information helps students develop both minds.

Multimedia can use a variety of sources in a variety of different ways. You can create many different access points for students. Students can experience the same information in different ways and get something new from each experience. This form of presentation also means students need to work towards putting all of that information together in a coherent way. When putting together presentations using tools like Prezi, you are forced to think about how you want students to take in the information. The way you present information is just as important as the information you present. Well-organized presentations can aid students in their synthesis, making the lead to those connections easier.

I think that synthesis can be a mastered skill that students develop through a disciplined mind. The ability to take in media information and re-present it is something that can occur with continuous exposure to multimedia. Being able to master responding to multimedia is something that today's students need to develop in our ever increasing technological world. So much of what we take in is through audio and visual means. We need to help our students process these types of media.

Creating and using multimedia in the classroom is a great way to help students develop both disciplined and synthesized minds. The possibilities and opportunities provided by multimedia are endless for our students.

Gardner, H. 2009. Five Minds for the Future. Perseus Books Group. Boston. 

Developing the Synthesizing Mind

According to Howard Gardner, the synthesizing mind takes information from a variety of sources, processes it, and puts it back together in a way that makes sense to themselves and others. This type of mind is able to put things together and create a new level of understanding. Project-based Learning (PBL) activities are tailor-made for developing the synthesizing mind.

Interdisciplinary investigation is the hallmark of PBL.This type of activity involves integrating a variety resources, using different disciplines and refitting them together to create something new. The synthesizing mind is motivated by several things. PBL and the types of interdisciplinary investigations that build the synthesizing mind have "a motivating goal, an initial stance taken by the synthesizer, a set of tools or strategies that can be employed, one or more interim syntheses, and at least some criteria by which the success of the synthesis can be evaluated" (p. 58). With PBL, students will find that more than one resource, technique, and skill-set will be needed to solve the problem.

One PBL activity that I worked on in my grad course had students creating a business that served a need in the community. Student objectives included gathering data on the needs of the community, developing a business plan, securing space,and funding for their project. Learning tasks along the way had students learning different skills, such as how to use online survey tools, digital presentation tools, audio and video media tools, and some good old fashioned pavement pounding to provide a solution to their task. Students used these newly learned skills to develop their ideas and create their community-based business.

Through PBL students learn how decide which tools and resources they will need to use in order to find a solution to their problem. This activity has students creating their own learning experiences based on what they need, which allows them to form a deeper connection to both the content and the skills. Building the synthesizing mind is all about creating problem-solvers. We want students to be able to problem solve across the curriculum and transfer knowledge from their own experiences to one content area and another. The genius minds Gardner regards that "tie... together a range of phenomena" (p. 48) to formulate their ideas. Their minds make wholly new concepts from different aspects of the world around them. In the classroom, we want our students to challenge us. Synthesizing minds own their knowledge. We want them to take what is presented and turn it into something that they own.



Gardner, H. (2009). Five Minds for the Future. Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.