5 technologies to promote creative learning

Teachers are constantly searching for new ways to promote good learning. If those ideas can also encourage creative thinking, they are even more welcome in the classroom. Technology can provide some of those creative solutions. Here are just five ideas for using technology to support learning, while promoting creative thinking, and I'm sure that with a little thought you will be able to adapt them to your own subject area.

1) Senses: In this picture the five traditional human senses are depicted. But there are actually more than five human senses, and teachers can challenge children to learn about some of the others (there are at least 10 more including proprioception - the kinaesthetic sense of where your body is in space, equilibrioception - the sense of balance and motion, nociception - or the experience of pain, thermoception - sensing heat, and so on). Ask your students to create icons or images representing these newly discovered senses. They could use cameras, graphics software, a combination of these, or some other tools to create and capture their illustrations. They could make their final presentation into a poster. [NB: This is useful in science, especially biology, but could be adapted for other subjects where there are lists or categories involved. To complete this task students must first understand and appreciate what the non-traditional senses are and how they are used, and then use their creativity to depict them accurately.]

2) Wiki'd Writing: Ask your students (in small groups or on their own) to either edit an existing Wikipedia page, or create a new one on a topic not yet covered. The latter option is more advanced and problematic, because many of the commonly known topics are already well covered on Wikipedia. Many Wikipedia pages appeal for additional content, verification or editing which could provide students with some clues as to how to proceed. [NB: This could be applied to just about any subject in the curriculum. To complete this task successfully, students will need some in depth knowledge of the topic they are covering - this will require considerable reading, research and investigation.]

3) Commons Touch: Ask students to submit two or three good quality images to Wikimedia Commons. Many people visit the site to find images of high quality that are copyright free. Students can also track how many times their images are used by other people over the course of an academic year. [NB: Again, this should be easily adaptable to any curriculum subject. Students will need to know how to compose and capture good images, and also will need to be aware of the gaps in the image repository on Wikimedia Commons. They will also need a fair appreciation of how Creative Commons licensing works.]

4) Making Twistory: Get students to follow, and interact with, historical figures on Twitter. What kind of questions should they ask? How might they get the historical figures to respond to the questions? There are many characters to choose from such as William Shakespeare, Florence Nightingale, Benjamin Franklin or King Henry VIII. If you would like to have a go tweeting as a historical character yourself, here's a link showing you how to be a historical figure on Twitter. [NB: Great for the study of history, but could be adapted to English language and literature (authors), science or technology (scientists and inventors), geography (explorers), and foreign languages (tweets in those languages - see also Lingua Tweeta). Students will need to search for and verify celebrity or historical figure Twitter accounts, and then frame the questions they wish to ask them.]

5) Video Mashups: Ask students to find 3 unrelated YouTube videos. Using the built in YouTube Editor, ask them to select sections and mash them up, mixing elements to create a totally new message. How is the message different to those of the three component videos used? What does the message mean now, and how does the sequence of moving images and/or narrative support that message (form)? Who is the mash up video aimed at (audience and purpose)? [NB: Ideal for English Language or Media teaching, but could be adaptable to other subject areas. Your students will need to know about purpose, audience and form, will learn how to compare and contrast, and will also need to learn how to use the YouTube editing tools.]

I bet you can come up with some more!

Photo by Niki Dugan


5 technologies to promote creative learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.