creativity and education

From looking around the internet, one idea I’ve seen is that being creative and creating a new idea is done by making a combination of old ideas and creating a new one…‘Creativity is the juxtaposition of ideas which were previously thought to be unrelated.’. They say that everyone has the ability to be creative, they just need to be able to make connections between ideas to make something new.

‘Psychologists call the activities associated with idea generation “loose associative thinking” processes.’.

The creative process:

I find looking for blogs quite useful in the respect that you get a detailed idea from one person and then, because others can comment on it, you get a range of opinions which can create a debate. I will use this blog on creativity in 21st century education as an example.

This blog is talking about ‘a shift towards learner-centered education and creating creative thinkers being seen in 21st century education’. He said that children need to begin to ‘think creatively: they will need to learn on their own, adapt to new challenges and innovate’.

I then went on to read a lot of the comments by other people which agreed with, disagreed with or even added to what he had said. This was interesting as it made it easier to understand and expand on what he was saying. He and another user even had a discussion within the comments about what he had said.

I therefore think blogs are quite useful, however there are some which are just a bit rubbish so i am having to be quite selective when using google reader.

In the second of our creativity sessions, we experienced a bit of self hypnosis. I don’t know if this full worked for me but at times it did feel a bit like that time inbetween being awake and asleep where ideas in your head are flowing without you having to think about it, or make an effort.

We looked at some quotes later about developing creativity, and I found the one that related to my experience of the self hypnosis was Koestler’s ‘The marshy shore’ as this talked about ‘the borderline between sleep and full awakening’ which is similar to the feeling I felt.

I’m still not sure what this means about creativity, as I don’t think that because I experienced this it means I am a creative person or anything, but we will see..

I found the first creativity seminar very interesting, starting with the Ken Robinson video which was funny and also raised some interesting issues relating to creativity in education. He talked about the issue that the education system doesn’t place enough importance on creativity, which I agree with. I believe that as we get older, through our education less and less importance is placed on being creative, but more on getting the right answer. I think that children have less inhibitions, and are less scared of getting the wrong answer, meaning that they are more free to be creative.

I also found the activity we did interesting, where we were told to just write about anything..at first I found this quite strange and didn’t know what to write, but once I started I realised there was nothing I was supposed to write and couldn’t get it wrong, so found myself writing more and more.

I think I will find this module very interesting and would like to see how creativity can be used within subjects such as maths and science.