These were the things that I thought would be helpful in terms of creativity:

• Encouragement- People helping you out, giving/sharing ideas with others
• Not being afraid- of getting things wrong, of what people think
• Time- Having time to think about what you’d like to do, time to carry out what you’d like to do
• Enjoyment- If you enjoy what you’re doing, you’ll put more effort into it
• Fulfilment- If you do something worthwhile that could benefit you or others through being creative
• Positivity- links with encouragement
• Environment- If you’re in a good, constructive environment it’ll work better for you.
• Interaction- Sharing your ideas, getting ideas off other people
• Identifying- You may need to find your angle on it. Find the part you find interesting and use that to help you enjoy it

We were told then to say how we would use these in our everyday lives. So far, i’ll admit, i have been very unsuccessful in doing any of them. However, it’s a new week and this week I am going to try and better manage my time. Leaving more time for work so I can make it more fun and creative!

been thinking about my assignment and trying to find a title that I think will work and also allow for aspects of creativity. At the moment I think i’m going to go for why is creativity important in education? I realise the last question would probably involve the most obvious creativity but this I think is a serious issue that could be really interesting to address.

As part of my research for it, I came across a Scottish Govt website promoting creativity in schools. A lot of what they are saying is addressed in the ‘All Our Futures’ report but they did flag up a really interesting point that I’ve creativitiy is not always a good thing and that it must be values driven.

I found the ‘When Smart Is Dumb’ paper really interesting. I think it gave an insightful view into how schools tend to work and complimented the Ken Robinson paper as you could see how the tradionalist form of education is what seems to be rife in schools today.  I personally do think that it is important to let children develop naturally, otherwise they are never going to benefit. If they are forced to learn something, they are not going to enjoy it and may not understand it so in reality the student and the teacher are wasting their time.

 I found an interesting link on Ellie Whitwells blog that I think relates to what was talked about in the papers, particularly Goleman’s.

Thinking Creatively

The blog suggests that we are moving away from the type of education where knowledge is enforced upon us and moving more towards one that encourages us to think for ourselves and develop our own knowledge and ideas. This is what I felt both papers were trying to encourage. An education that would allow the child to develop naturally and at their own pace. By encouraging children to think for themselves, this is exactly what they would be doing.

The author looks into the ideas of project based and experimental learning which allow the children to try things first hand so they are learning as they go. I think this gives them scope to make mistakes and learn from them as they will be experiencing the consequences rather than being told and not fully understanding.  He emphasizes the idea of life long learning and I believe that creativity does promote this. The mistakes you can make, the ideas you have and the fact it is all your own means you are constantly developing and learning and it is not something that can be taken away from you. You become less dependent on other sources like teachers if you do it yourself so the nattural individual idea of learning would help students become more independent in their education and I feel could benefit them for the furture.

I found the extract from “Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention” really interesting, although possibly contradictory to what we had been talking about in the seminars. Czikszentmihalyi always separates creative people from ‘normal’ people but I thought the whole point in creativity was that it was in everyone and everyone could do something creative. I realise that the people she is referring to in the chapter are exceptional but I did think that some of the things she was saying, like ‘normal people are rarely original’ was going against what we were discussing after the Ken Robinson video where creativity was in everyone.

However, I did like the traits she described in a creative person such as confidence, personality, time, patience, development, tradition, interaction etc. Some of these were areas I would not I have thought of especially the contradictions she described in people such as rebellious and tradition. I think all of this emphasizes the complexity involved in doing something really creative like a lot of the people talked about in the chapter. These kind of things however could be what put people off thinking they are creative. Not many people would think they have the complexity described in this chapter and so would not think that they would be able to be creative.

I didn’t recognise many (if any) of the people talked about in the chapter so decided to look some of them up. I wanted to see what they were being credited for being creative for and why they were being described as being so complex and allowed in this almost exclusive part of the creativity club.

(Brenda Milner)

(Jacob Rabinow)

(Mark Strand)

What I did notice from some of this research was that a lot of the people referred to were/are involved in the sciences and areas that many, as discussed in the seminars do not think of as creative. I found this interesting because Czikszentmihalyi demonstrates the creative side to the sciences and shows how people can have similar thought patterns and personalities despite being in different fields.

Also whilst I was looking up these people, I came across this creativity blog which I thought was interesting and also referred to Czikszentmihalyi  so could be relevant!

(Creativity blog)

I can’t seem to get hold of the two books for the reading this week so until I find them I figured blogging and searching for blogs would be the best thing to do.

As I was searching through google, I found an interesting blog from a woman whom I presume is an artist. Some of the comments she makes on creativity and her being able to find it I think are very interesting and quite relevant in discovering how one can be creative.

In some parts of the blog she mentions the change of scenery and location can help her to become more creative as they inspire her and help to develop her thoughts and so her art. The talk of her grief and how that inspired her to create I also found very interesting.

I think this blog taught me that situations, surroundings and you own personal state are vital elements to creativity and that you need new things and emotions to help you feel inspired. This is why it is so important to promote good learning environments in schools, to encourage the children to feel inspired and want to learn and create.

I haven’t quite figured out how to include the links in the text without making the whole blog highlighted so below is the link!

(here it is!)

As I was searching for the Ken Robinson TED interview thing, I came across another blog on him and creativity in education. I thought is raised an interesting point on whether schools should be blamed for the lack of creativity going on.

It talks about the curriculum and restriction this imposes on teachers and consequently students due to the fact that the curriculum has to be followed and there is little room for movement or improvisation around it. I always thought this is what creativity was about. Moving away from the norm and trying something new, developing ideas further so you have something unique. I’m not entirely sure how to add links yet but here it might be

There was another blog alongside this one which is also addressing creativity in schools but looks at the alienation almost of arts students and how they are dismissed from the academic side of things because art, music, dance and drama are not really seen as academic subjects. I feel quite strongly about this as I think that creative subjects like this sometimes require more intelligence than maths or science as you are having to think for yourselves, think outside the box and develop your own ideas. When you’re at school, maths and science are taught to you, you can rarely go off in your own direction, you either understand what you are doing and succeed or you don;t and you struggle. Whereas with arts, you have to think fr yourself, there is no one there to teach you what to paint or how to feel about certain things that you can then express creatively through your work. There is a sense of passion in these subjects. The people that are really good at them feel passionately about what they are doing and I think that requires a lot of intelligence and patience and can sometimes be wasted in schools especially as they are rarely considered academic

I’m not sure if any of this made sense, but there we go! xxx

(the first link I talked about)

(the second link)

Hello!

Ok, I think I may have figured out how to work this. I thought I had posted a thing last time but it turns out I pressed save instead of publish. Now I’m getting to know how to owrk the site etc it’s becoming more interesting although I think I’ll have to spend quite a bit of time figuring out how to add links and people for that matter.

I thought the seminar yesterday was interesting with the hypnotherapy, I actually fell asleep quite briefly! Although I don’t think I would have the patience to do it to myself, I don’t think I would be able to concentrate for long enough unless I had someone else making sure I was giving it my full attention.

Right I think I’ve written enough, I’m still unsure as to what to write so I’m going to explore and see what links i can find to try and attach

xxxx

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