Creativity is a great
buzzword at the moment – everyone wants children to be more creative, but what
does that mean? Why is everyone so bothered? What has technology got to do with
it?
A large part of the
government’s motivation in the drive for creativity has been the need to create
a stable creative economy. Ideas are unique; if Britain has the best ideas, this
creativity cannot be outsourced more cheaply to another country. This desire to
establish a thriving creative industry filters down to schools in the form of
policies directed at increasing creativity and nurturing the creatives of the
future.
It used to be so
different. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when the economy was industrial, the
emphasis was on anything that might help you prosper in t’ factory. English,
Maths and Science were seen as the most important subject areas, as they had
direct applications to a student’s working life. Our problem is that we have
retained this old-fashioned education system, promoting conformity over
creativity, even though it serves a world we no longer live in. The injection
of creativity into the curriculum is a move to fix this and, in an internet
age, it has never been easier to find a job to fit your skills.
It has long been the perception
that jobs in the creative industry were hard to come by and so people were
discouraged from this path. Now, because of the advances in technology, if a
student has the talent, the opportunities are there. A talented designer could
leave college, buy a computer and reasonably priced printer and set up a
website to sell their designs. They can explore different, non-traditional
avenues for promoting themselves and their skills; sites like Facebook, Bebo
and Myspace all help fledgling creative businesses attract attention. Aside
from social media, websites have sprung up all over the place of late, pairing
up freelance creatives and potential clients – very few designers lack an
online portfolio.
Giving students a solid
foundation in the technical skills they will need in their future careers is
vital. In today’s creative economy, technology facilitates ideas; without it
you don’t have a product to sell. Students should have a grounding in web
design, audio, video and photography, and it’s not just the designers,
musicians, writers and filmmakers who will benefit. Creativity is important in
business, medicine, law, building, hairdressing and especially in teaching! In
the past, students were frequently encouraged to make the choice between
academic subjects and the “softer” creative path. This was fine because it was
a choice representative of industry; you either chose to be an accountant or an
artist. The trouble nowadays is that, if you are an artist the chances are that
you do your own accounts and, if you are an accountant starting a new business,
an understanding of how a website is put together can be a real advantage.
As a response to this,
creativity and technology have gone cross-curricular. Creative techniques, like
animation and podcasting, are showing up in Maths and French classes up and
down the country, engaging students and developing those key transferable
skills. We aren’t the only country to have spotted the benefits of a creative
approach to education…
In
2002, the US state of Maine teamed up with
Apple to provide every 12- and 13-year-old in public middle school with their
own MacBook and Internet access in their homes. Teachers benefited too; middle
and high school staff were given all the training and support they needed to
tap into the creative potential of computers and the Internet. Their project
paid off; they saw a rise in attainment across a broad range of subjects, with
state-wide Maths and English scores in particular improving considerably after
the great experiment. A group of students who used animation in their Earth
Science class scored substantially higher in a comprehension test than a
control group who hadn’t. As if that wasn’t enough, offering students a
creative style of learning reduced absenteeism and the number of disciplinary
incidents. Educators were obviously impressed, because the scheme continued and
is currently being rolled out to more high school students.
Apple
is interesting in that, as a company, they have helped to change the face of
technology in education. Their reputation as the creative industry’s choice of
machine (and software like the iLife Suite and their pro applications like
Final Cut and Logic) has made video, audio, photography and web design more
accessible. Apple have had education in mind for quite some time; when the
Apple II was developed especially for schools, they gave one to every school in
California.
Steve Jobs described computers as “mental bicycles” (as in equipment to
exercise your brain, not transport for nutters). The main reason Apple are so
worthy of mention here is their focus on transforming education.
There
are different ways of using technology in the classroom. You can replace
something with technology, like a piece of paper with a word processing
document or a whiteboard with an interactive whiteboard. This allows for
increased functionality (i.e. spell check, watching video on the whiteboard)
but it is not transformative. A transformative use of technology revolutionises
the way you do something so that, for example, rather than having the same
paper-based maths test each week, in one lesson you create a head-to-head maths
TV quiz show. It’s the difference between describing a chemical experiment and
having kids use their own creativity to animate the reactions, which gives them
a tangible product to work towards and save for revision.
After years of
continuous progression, classrooms are being kitted out with the latest
technology. Today’s students have a world of creative technology available to
them which, with the right guidance from their teachers, they can use across
the curriculum to develop valuable skills – without being pigeon-holed as
either academic or creative. Essentially, in order to teach students
creativity, a teacher must use their own.
To find out more about getting creative in your classroom, get in touch with us on or email our experts at 03332 409 333
learning@jigsaw24.com.