BFTP: The gift of creativity

A Saturday Blue Skunk "feature" will be the revision of an old post. I am calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. This post originally appeared December  26, 2005.

Toys opened last night. Roboraptor was a huge hit. I did not know it, but it was on 4-year-old Paulie's wish list, but vetoed by his mom and dad as too expensive. Paul was so excited he could barely talk (which is almost impossible for that little chatterbox). The cats see the robot as their own very large squeaky toy with a tail that is eminently bat-able.

For Paul some toys become "real." They are beings with back stories and are worthy of care and concern. His vivid imagination and  storytelling ability regarding them is seemingly limitless. Whether the subject is his invisible sister Jessica (for whom we must leave the bathroom door open), Snakey his favorite giant blue rubber snake, or now Roboraptor, each of the characters in Paul's mental world has dozens of details that come directly from somewhere in his creative center. As a grandfather, it's difficult not to think Paul is a uniquely talented boy of superior genetic make-up, but my experience is that all children are inherently creative. And we then do our best as educators to bleed it from them.

Of course educators pay a lot of lip service to encouraging creativity in our students, but do we really? Creativity seems to have been relegated to art classes. (See Concerns about Creativity.) Oh, we throw in a "fun" writing assignment among the three paragraph expository essays, but most of the time we discourage originality through stay-within-the-line rules, one-right-answer tests, must-be-followed templates, and praise for conformity.

If I had one wish for Paul and all students this coming year, it would be that every teacher builds the expectation of creative thinking and communication into each assignment.

Such a wish is not just fuzzy, feel-good claptrap. From BusinessWeek Online's Best of 05: The Way To Succeed In The Creative Economy: Innovate

The Knowledge Economy is giving way to the Creative Economy. Information has become a commodity like coal or corn. People once thought that superiority in technology and information would ease the economic pain of outsourcing manufacturing to Asia. But it turns out that a good deal of knowhow--software writing, accounting, legal work, engineering--can be outsourced to places like India, China, and Eastern Europe, too.

The solution: Focus on innovation and design as the new corporate core competencies. To prosper, companies have to constantly change the game in their industries by creating products and services that satisfy needs consumers don’t even know they have yet. That’s how loyalty is built. Mastering new design methods and learning new innovation metrics are the keys to corporate success, if not survival. Smart companies now have a senior-level executive charged with driving innovation or sparking creativity. Perhaps it’s even the CEO.

(We've heard this from Daniel Pink too.) 

I won't pretend to know enough about best practices in science, social studies, language arts or math to suggest how original thinking might be added to these areas, but one place where librarians do have influence is in information literacy and technology projects. So how might we spark, rather than discourage, creativity in research and when using technology with kids? Along with standing by my suggestions in Designing Research Projects Students (and Teachers) Love, I'd propose some rather simple actions:

1. Banning clip art.  Or at least asking that clip art be modified.
2. Encouraging a visual representations of concepts as a part of all assignments.
3. Asking for the narrative voice when writing and for storytelling when giving oral presentations.
4. Integrating more technology into art and music classes - and more art and music into technology projects.
5. Asking for multiple possible answers to questions or multiple possible solutions to problems.
6. Giving points for "design" or formatting on all assignments - more than just "neatness counts."
7. Instead of simply marking a response "wrong," asking for a reason why the answer was given.

I know, easy to do is easy to say. But I can hope. Your ideas for encouraging creativity?

2010: the year of the cloud

Predicting the future is easy. It’s trying to figure what’s going on now that’s hard. - Fritz Dresser

2010 was the year the cloud's impact became clear, permanent and more far-reaching than this slow-thinker had previously realized. Few things we did in my school district have not been in some way cloud-related - and those projects on the horizon look to be as well. My own personal technology use for both work and leisure has changed significantly this year due to ubiquitous cloud access and the devices meant to take advantage of it.

Like we now look back and wonder what life was like before there were PCs, before there was the Internet, before there was the social network, I'm confident we will look back trying to remember what storing information, media, computer programs and files locally and physically must have involved.

How DID we ever manage?

Manifestations at school

Implementing GoogleApps for Education for the staff about a year ago and for the students last fall was a huge jump to the cloud for our district. Our dependence on our own local file servers is lessening each year. Personal file storage and applications took the jump this year, joining our hosted web server, hosted IEP program, and hosted finance and HR systems. Our student information system is about the only big ticket item for which we maintain an in-house server - and that program uses a web browser interface. For both convenience and economy, the move to the cloud will continue as a primary goal for our department.

Our district also implemented a new Cisco VOIP telephone system - replacing over 1200 handsets along with re-configuring and upgrading our WAN and building LANs. The management, of course, is hosted off site. We upgraded our Circ/Cat Plus Follett library system to Destiny - which is hosted by a regional data center.

A major question for all technology implementation projects is now "Is your solution hosted?"

Personal uses

Although I bought one of the first Kindles in 2008, this was the year I read almost exclusively e-books on both the Kindle 3 and the iPad. For the past few months, I have been actually resenting having to purchase print books and have been replacing, when possible, my old paper-bound favorites with their digital cousins. Not only do I not want to worry about having access to them, but I want access anytime, anywhere.

I've stopped buying DVDs. The pace of physical discs slipping through my mail has slowed considerably as Netfix directly streams more of my favorites to the new LED television set that rivals the movie theater's picture and sound - and without the $10 popcorn and talking morons sitting behind you. (So yes, I've been going to few movies in the theater as well.)

This has also been the year that I've used GoogleDocs both at work and for my professional writing more than I have used Word. I've been sharing my articles with my coworkers and my editors on-line instead of attaching them to e-mails. I've opened up draft copies of the book I am writing to colleagues for suggestions. And I've taken to keeping both work and personal documents more online than off. My books, my photos, my theater tickets, my airline tickets, and my bank accounts all are stored in the cloud.

My new favorite applications have become DropBox and Evernote. Since the number of computing devices I'm using is growing (MacBook Air, iPad, iPod, desktop at work). Flash drives now seem so, I don't know, 2009-ish.

Ramifications

My wimpy prediction is that 2010 will be viewed historically as the pivotal year technology departments and personnel roles changed direction and mission. For both technology directors and technicians, the move to the cloud is having a profound effect that will only accelerate. This is the beginning of the end for school-supplied, school-controlled computer access. - of the tech department's primary task of keeping individual work stations configured and running and the end of the futile attempt to keeps kids away from their own technologies while they are in school. (Didn't everyone always have a smartphone and use the Facebook app to communicate all day long?) Kids really are little cyborgs anymore. Just one of the many horses that we are realizing are "out of the barn."

For libraries, 2010 will be seen as the last time that buying any reference materials in print made sense at all. The year doused any smoldering embers of the "library as warehouse" mentality, with surviving libraries being the place where you "do" instead of where you "get" things. This is the year that I've truly realized that libraries and librarians that are not changing really will go away - that economics really will trump traditional and sentimentality. And it is the first time I believe this is a good thing. We will be a smaller, more flexible and more vital profession as we adopt to cloud-based realities and merge with technology integration specialists into a single profession. For those willing and able to change at any rate.

As this year closes, I also see that relationship of the technology department with other departments will need to change as hardware and software support, maintenance, and even planning take a back seat to the role of enabler of other departmental and district objectives. My sense is that every department will need its own "technology guru" rather than departments depending on the staff of a separate "technology" department. There will need to be a blended subject/technology specialist in every department - curriculum/instruction, assessment, staff development, business, HR, transportation - well every department. Every teacher, like it or not, will be an on-line teacher that will use student-owned devices as transparently as s/he now uses the white board. As long it is needed, my department and I will be focused on providing the infrastructure and coordination required to make sure these folks are successful at their jobs.

As both parent and teacher, I always felt my mission was to work myself out of a job - to help create individuals who have the skills, understandings and values that enabled them to learn, work and live without any help from me. Cloud computing, out-sourcing support, and low-maintenance Internet devices will allow me to adopt a similar mission as the head of a technology department - to create technology users who can focus on their real jobs - teaching and learning and leading - just fine without me.

I'm thinking I may need to renew my teaching license.

And a happy 2011 to all Blue Skunk Readers!

A dozen ways to teach ethical and safe technology use

From the draft of my Survival Skills book:

A dozen ways to teach and promote ethical and safe technology use

Responsible teachers recognize that schools must give students the understandings and skills they need to stay safe not just in school, but outside of school where most Internet use by young people occurs. Over-filtered school networks set up a false sense of security; the real world of the Internet is quite different from the Internet at school.

Teachers who address safe and ethical Internet use proactively:

1. Articulate personal values when using technology. Talk to students about ethical online conduct and set clear limits about what is allowed and what is not allowed. Teachers need to be knowledgeable about the school’s Acceptable Use Policy and work to help their students understand it.  A district’s current acceptable use policy should include language about posting private information about both oneself and others. This private information includes home addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and labeled photographs. Any bullying policies you might have should cover electronic bullying as well as physical bullying.

2. Stress the consideration and application of principles rather than relying on a detailed set of rules. Although sometimes more difficult to enforce in a consistent manner, a set of a few guidelines* rather than lengthy set of specific rules is more beneficial to students in the long run. By applying guidelines rather than following rules, students engage in higher level thinking processes and learn behaviors that will continue into their next classroom, their homes, and their adult lives.

3. Model ethical behaviors. All of us learn more from what others do than what they say. Verbalization of how we personally make decisions is a very powerful teaching tool, but it’s useless to lecture about safe and appropriate use when we ourselves might not follow our own rules.

4. Build student trust. If an inappropriate site is accidentally accessed, use the incident to teach some strategies about using clues in search result findings to discriminate between relevant and non-relevant sites. (“Jose, when the search results say ‘hot chicks xxx,’ that probably won’t be a source for your report on chickens.”)

5. Encourage discussion of ethical issues. “Cases,” whether from news sources or from actual school events, can provide superb discussion starters and should be used when students are actually learning computer skills. Students need practice in creating meaningful analogies between the virtual world and the physical world. How is reading another person’s e-mail without their permission like and unlike reading their physical mail?

6. Accept the fact students will make mistakes. Coach John Wooden famously said, “If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything.” Learning is about making errors and figuring out how not to repeat them. A middle school student who shares her password with a friend who then destroys files has made a recoverable mistake -- one that she might remember before sharing personal data as an adult.

7. Allow students personal use of the Internet. If Internet computers are not being used for curricular purposes, students can research topics of personal interest (that are not inherently dangerous or pornographic). The best reason for allowing that is that students are far less likely to risk loss of Internet privileges if that means losing access to sites they enjoy.

8. Reinforce ethical behaviors and react to the misuse of technology. Technology use behaviors are treated no differently than other behaviors -- good or bad -- and the consequences of such behaviors are equal. Try not to overreact to incidents of technological misuse. If a student were caught reading Playboy in paper form, it’s doubtful we’d suspend all his reading privileges.

9. Create environments that help students avoid temptations. Computer screens that are easily monitored and the requirement that users log in and out of network systems help remove the opportunities for technology misuse. Your presence is a far more effective means of assuring good behavior than filtering software.

10. Assess children’s understanding of ethical concepts. Do not give technology-use privileges until a student has demonstrated that he or she knows and can apply school policies. Test appropriate use prior to students gaining online access.

11. Educate our students and ourselves. Aware teachers are using online curricula from organizations like iLearn, BlogSafety, NetFamilyNews, and Responsible Netizen to inform themselves and their children. These ready-made curricula are simple to integrate when teaching Internet safety units.

12. Educate your parents about ethical technology use. Through school newsletters, talks at parent organization meetings, and through school orientation programs, you can inform and enlist the aid of parents in teaching and enforcing good technology practices.

Will doing those things guarantee that a student will never get in trouble or danger online? Of course not. But schools never have been able to guarantee students’ physical safety either. What schools must be able to demonstrate is that they have shown due diligence -- that they have taken serious steps to prevent harm from occurring. That means a formal plan -- one that includes the above actions and documentation of the plan -- is necessary. And installing Internet filters alone does not constitute due diligence.

Ethical instruction needs to be on going. A single lesson, a single unit, or a single curriculum strand will not suffice. Teachers should integrate ethical instruction into every activity that uses technology.

* Johnson’s 3 P’s of Technology Ethics:

1. Privacy - I will protect my privacy and respect the privacy of others.
2. Property - I will protect my property and respect the property of others.
3. a(P)propriate Use - I will use technology in constructive ways and in ways which do not break the rules of my family, church, school, or government.

Image source: http://gadgetsin.com/angel-and-devil-ipad-cases.htm