Post-Break Post

Week 4 for Curriculum in the Cloud

TED Talk

Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Kids have incredible capacity to learn and be creative.  Why don’t we encourage their creativity and talents?

Kids will try anything.  They’ll take a chance.  They aren’t frightened of being wrong.

If you aren’t prepared to be wrong, you won’t come up with anything original.

By adulthood, most kids have become scared of being wrong.  We need to praise mistakes!

Arts are on the bottom of every education system.  There is even a hierarchy within the arts, putting dance and theater below music.

We steer kids away from things they like because we tell them there’s no way they’ll get a job doing that.

Intelligence is variable and dynamic.  We need to teach all manners, and feed creativity.

We suppress students’ creativity because they aren’t “normal”.  Thinking ADHD.

Some people need to move to think.  That isn’t how our system is set up.

I want to make is my goal to foster students’ creativity instead of stifling it.  That’s a cool idea!

My Creation Exploration:

Students often create really cool things in Desmos.  The bummer is that they show it to their peers who say “Wow, that’s really cool!  I couldn’t ever do that”.  They never really pass the knowledge on to their fellow students.  I want to change that.  I want students to use a story telling tool to be able to display how they created their masterpiece!

Screencast-o-matic is one that I’m comfortable using.  It’s a great interface and easy to use.  Students would definitely be able to use my account to create their own screencasts of their Desmos creations.

Link to my sample screencast: http://somup.com/cbV6hLsYh        

PowToon is something I’ve always wanted to use but have been intimidated by it.  I don’t think it’s ideal for this kind of thing since you really need to see the screen, but I played around with it and it’s so fun!

Prezi is another tool I’ve seen used lots but have never had any experience using it.  I spent some time trying to transfer a presentation I made for my FST class and got caught up in all the creative tools you can use.  I barely got past my first slide.  I definitely want to learn more because this is a really cool tool!

Reflection Parts	Description	My Notes
1. Resources	I dug into Screencast-o-Matic, PowToon, and Prezi.	See above for what I learned!
2. Create	I made a cool screencast of the track race I made in Desmos!	http://somup.com/cbV6hLsYh
3. Action	I'm looking forward to having students make their own screencasts of their cool Desmos stuff.	Students are often amazed at my Desmos creations or those of their peers. I want them to show off their work and encourage others to try to make cool things too!