This is a great read. It ponders the idea that critical and creative thinking may be of more use than ‘An Hour of Code’.

Check it out.

Coding or critical thinking, N. Jarrat, March 2017.

I recently read brochure put out by Early Childhood Australia on Nurturing creativity. It was primarily focussed on young children. There were some excellent points raised in the brochure/article.

Point 1. ‘Children are born predisposed to be creative. It is our job to nurture children’s creativity and allow it to flourish.’

Point 2: ‘Children should have the opportunities to:

• Imagine and create
• Propose theories and reasons
• master skills
• have meaningful experiences
• express thoughts and ideas
• solve problems
• engage in reflective thinking
• explore diverse ways of knowing, thinking and learning.’

Point 3: ‘Nurturing creativity is about identifying people’s strengths and establishing an education community’.

What implications do these ideas have for me as an educator?

I will answer with more questions.

As, education expert Ken Robinson*, believes ‘we are educating people out of their creativity.’

If Robinson, is correct (there is much contention surrounding his ideas), then are we promoting creativity in our classrooms, or are we stifling it?

What can I do to to promote creativity in my workplace?

How do I encourage the innate creativity of students I come into contact with?

How do you change mindsets that focus on one form of creativity but not others?

Including problem solving, reflection and exploring diverse points of view can often boost creativity.  It is a process. A long, sometimes unpredictable and consuming process, yet we continue every day nurturing and encouraging creativity. We know it is worth it in the end. We just have to think of creative ways to get there.

_______________

Stonehouse, A., Early Childhood Australia, ‘Nurturing Creativity’, 2011

*Ken Robinson is a British Education expert who wrote ‘Out of our Minds: learning to be creative,’ and ‘Creative Schools’.

“Media education can and has revolutionized the way we think about public health. The shift to a focus on the environment rather than the traditional focus on the host or agent has come about largely because of media education. We’ve begun to see all kinds of problems that used to be seen as individual choices or flaws — from violence to substance abuse to eating disorders — as partly the result of the environment in which people make their choices. And the most important aspect of our environment, of course, is the media.”
“Huge and powerful industries — alcohol, tobacco, junk food, guns, diet — depend upon a media-illiterate population. Indeed they depend upon a population that is disempowered and addicted. These industries will and do fight our efforts with all their mighty resources. And we will fight back, using the tools of media education which enable us to understand, analyze, interpret, to expose hidden agendas and manipulation, to bring about constructive change, and to further positive aspects of the media.” 
Jean Kilbourne, author: Deadly Persuasion : How Advertising Manipulates Us in an Age of Addiction

The European charter for media literacy. Fascinating reading. http://www.euromedialiteracy.eu/ 

Patricia Aufderheide, Associate Professor of Communication, American University, writes about the necessity of becoming media literate in a report of The National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy: “Media literacy, the movement to expand notions of literacy to include the powerful post-print media that dominate our informational landscape, helps people understand, produce, and negotiate meanings in a culture made up of powerful images, words, and sounds….

A media-literate person – and everyone should have the opportunity to become one – can decode, evaluate, analyze, and produce both print and electronic media. The fundamental objective of media literacy is critical autonomy in relationship to all media. Emphases in media literacy training vary widely, including informed citizenship, aesthetic appreciation and expression, social advocacy, self-esteem, and consumer competence” (Aufderheide, l993).

(http://www.frankwbaker.com/Media_Lit_Quotes.html)

“We must prepare young people for living in a world of powerful images, words and sounds.” 
UNESCO, 1982

“When people talk to me about the digital divide, I think of it not so much about who has access to what technology as about who knows how to create and express themselves in the new language of the screen. If students aren’t taught the language of sound and images, shouldn’t they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read and write?”
George Lucas, filmmaker (Sept.2004, Edutopia, Life on the Screen)