Creativity

The videos were full of great information. Creativity is very hard to teach. Students need to be creative. In a couple of the videos it mentions that students need to fail and learn from their failures. If we let students fail they are actually learning to be creative because they are forced to try something new. Using technology is a way to spark creativity and curiosity.
Here are my thoughts on the videos:

1. John Brown talked about the best predictor about how a student will do in college is their ability to form and join study groups. Hearing this makes me believe that having students working in collaborative groups is a must. Students need to work with each other in order to gain as much knowledge of the content.  This is also part of 21st century learning, collaboration. 
2. Howard Gardner laid out five kinds of minds: disciplined, synthesizing, creative, respectful and ethical. Discipline is the mastery of different subjects in school. He mentioned four scholarly disciplines: historical, scientific, Mathematical, artistic. Next, synthesizing is understanding what you are learning and  being able to share the information with others. The Creative mind is the mind that does something new. In order to create something new you need to synthesize. Respectful mind is giving people the benefit of the doubt even if they are different than us. And lastly, ethical mind is about responsibility.  One thing that stood out to me was that teachers can't teach synthesizing unless we know what bad synthesizing is. In order to know what good synthesizing is we need to know what doesn't work. This made sense to me, and it makes me wonder if I need to read more about synthesizing in order to make sure I understand it well enough to teach. This video has a lot to do with the brain.
3. Ken Robinson talked about "No Child Left Behind" and how it does not help differentiate instruction for different learners. All students are different and NCLB is not based on diversity. He mentions that if students are curious about things then they will learn. Teachers need to be the facilitator of learning. When he compared the United States to Finland some things stood out to me. One of them being that students are learning and they need to be engaged by their curiosity and individuality. Another being that, in Finland, teachers are respected. I think this is important because being respected can help teachers because they can get the training they deserve and it is good on moral. This is another video that mention that students need to be curious about a subject in order to learn it. This fits in with problem-based learning. Students have a problem that they are interested about and have to find solutions to that problem, but they are interested in it.
4. Daniel Pink talked about how incentives do not always work. He mentions that incentives dull thinking and blocks creativity. I thought this was really interesting because you would think the opposite, that incentives would want them to do a better job. A lot of jobs are requiring little to no creativity. This is creating a group of "left brained" thinkers. He mentions that using an intrinsic motivator will lead to better performance. There are three building blocks to a better way of doing things: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. I think this video ties in with the brain because it talks about intrinsic drive vs. rewards and incentives. 
   

Mobley's 6 insights are:

1. memorization, testing, lecturing are not creating creative thinkers. They need to be asking questions in a "non-linear" way. 
2. "becoming creative is an unlearning rather than a learning process"
3. You can't learn to be creative we "must become creative"
4. In order to become creative be around creative people
5. "creativity is  highly correlated with self-knowledge" 
6. It's OK to be wrong

Knowing what Mobley's 6 insights are I am realizing how hard creativity is to "teach." I really try to ask non-linear questions in my classroom and if students see something in  a different way than I am teaching it I always allow them to share out their ideas. But to unlearn something  is easier said than done, especially in 2nd grade. When they learn something it seems like they think it's the only way they can do something. For example, I had a student go home and do his math homework. He asked his mom for help and when she was trying to do it in another way than I taught he insisted that she was wrong. I had to explain to him that their are different ways of doing things and neither of them were wrong. I agree with the last insight that it is OK to be wrong. Most of the videos that we watched mentioned that it's OK to fail because it forces you to think in another way.