Learning Creative Learning: week 1

When the opportunity came up to participate in a MOOC, I jumped at  the chance to take part in Learning Creative Learning at MIT. Can you imagine learning with 24,000 other people?? We have been put into small groups in Google+ but it is still a little hard to comprehend how we will learn together. Today, I spent a fair amount of time reading and watching videos and I think I am getting caught up. I hope to use this space as my way to reflect. From the opening video, I am pretty excited by how what I learn, may impact my work at school. It's so interesting to me that my introduction to Seymour Papert way back in 1981 (when I was a kindergarten teacher) is still having an influence on my work.

Reading: All I Really need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten)

Quotes:

1. "If older students are going to learn through the kindergarten approach, they need different types of tools, media, and materials. This is where, in my opinion, digital technologies can play a transformational role in education."
2. "Our goal is to provide tools that can be used in multiple ways, leaving more room for children’s imaginations."
3. "The goal is not to nurture the next Mozart or Einstein, but to help everyone become more creative in the ways they deal with everyday problems. "
4.  Imagine: "Our guiding principle is “many paths, many styles” – that is, to develop technologies that can be used along many different paths, by children with many different styles."
5. Create: "is at the root of  creative thinking. If we want children to develop as creative thinkers, we need to provide them with more opportunities to create."
6. Play: "and learning can and should be intimately linked. Each, at its best, involves a process of experimentation, exploration, and testing the boundaries."
7. Share: "children become more engaged in the construction process when they are able to share their constructions with others in a community, and children become more engaged with communities when they are able to share constructions (not just chat) with others within those communities. "
8. Reflect: "Such reflection is a critical part of the creative process, but all too often overlooked in the classroom."
9. Imagine: "The process of Imagine, Create, Play, Share, and Reflect inevitably leads to new ideas – leading back to Imagine and the beginning of a new cycle."
11. "If children have enough time to go through the cycle only once, they’ll miss out on the most important part of the creative process."