The importance of Creativity in Education

Last Friday I was fortunate enough to attend a seminar on "Challenge-based Learning: Beyond Content to Concepts" by Marco Torres.

Marco has taught high school for ten years, and has been media coach and education technology director for San Fernando High School, one of the nation’s largest urban schools in Los Angeles. In addition to his work in the classroom, Marco Torres is also a professional filmmaker and photographer who uses these digital storytelling skills to add value to his curriculum. He has been recognized locally and internationally, including being honored as a California Teacher of the Year,  for his accomplishments in the classroom, and for the use of technology to empower minority students. Torres is an advocate for more collaboration between the media arts world. Torres has presented at numerous conferences throughout the world and his practical workshops help teachers push their teaching and learning to new exciting levels. He is a consultant for many U.S. and international schools and has keynoted in almost every state. He sits on the board for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, New Media Consortium and Full Sail University Online Advance Studies. He has been recognized by thought leadership groups such as TED and Big Ideas Fest.

Some of the notes I took, which are worth further discussion were:

•  Challenge based learning...the benefit of it is, that you actually have to "do" it!
•  Marco speaks to teachers all the time who blame the students for not being motivated but says they should be asking themselves what they are doing wrong?  "A movie maker can't blame the audience for not laughing".
• We need to focus our efforts on training students to be chefs not cooks! E.g. The chef comes up with the ideas...the cook just follows instructions.
• The value of knowledge use to be great, but now? Have Wikipedia and Google cheapened the respect that knowledge once had?
• He suggests you ask a teacher, "What makes you an expert?" then ask them "can that same knowledge or information be found on Google or Wikipedia?" "So how are you adding value ?"
• In NYC the second highest reason for student suspension is cheating. Marco asks teachers why they ask questions that kids can cheat on? The assumption is that the teacher knows the answer but it is far better and more authentic for students if a teachers is part of the learning.
• What are you doing to get students asking better questions? Teachers need to extend the learning, the culture of the classroom and the students should come up with the questions.
  Assumption in schools is that the teacher knows the answer. Better to be part of the learning.
• A documentary called "Jiro dreams of sushi" was highly recommended so that may be a future blog post.
• In schools, we see technology another noun we have to learn.......don't fixate on the medium. Technology should be the verb....it's what you do to the noun that is important.

Albert Einstein:  "its not that I'm so smart, I just stay with the problems longer"

Stephen Wolfram: "value is now defined by how to ask a better question"

Torres suggests that classrooms could become problem solving studios:

1. Fall in love with sharing and learning
2. Find an interesting problem
3. Solve the problem
4. Communicate it...not just writing.

For more you can visit his website at www.alaslearns.com or www.challengebasedlearning.org