Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Creativity Empowers Learning

This year when asked to share an Ignite talk at the Auckland EdTech Summit I chose to attempt presenting in five minutes the PLD theme for Manaiakalani schools in Term 2: Creativity Empowers Learning.

Our innovative Manaiakalani teachers and facilitators are preparing professional learning group sessions and staff meetings based on this concept so I thought I would give it a go too.

This movie is a slightly expanded version of the Ignite talk - without the relentless auto switching of slides I was able to slow it down a bit!  It includes snippets from two movies, a New Zealand documentary "The heART of the Matter" and a fun piece from Will Smith.

Our teachers spent a month in April contributing ideas to create an understanding of what we mean when we use the word Create in our pedagogical framework. I included this in the presentation. We debated fiercely as we co-constructed a way to synthesise the multiple contributions and after coming to an agreement Karen Ferguson created us a graphic to use. It incorporates the idea that while many definitions of creativity focus around thinking and using our brains, the pathway to creativity for many of us - and the children we teach- involves other parts of the body 'doing creative stuff' before the brain makes sense of it!