Thinking Skills and Creativity; ISTE Standards

Thinking Skills and Creativity; ISTE Standards

The article stresses the importance of schools educating for creativity. I believe this is where we are headed and I can see the impact it could have on higher levels of learning. This will include some hurdles and will be a big learning curve for some. Students will need to work together on tasks and the information will be more student led than teacher led. The areas of study will have to be areas of high interest for students so they are motivated and put forth their best effort. The  roles of student and teacher may look different, but with appropriate scaffolding the students should be able to problem solve through it.

I am going to compare the standards to the animal research project my students did 3^rd quarter. The 2^nd grade students searched the internet using educational sites such as Pebble Go to find facts about their animal. Next, the students used a graphic organizer for their rough draft and then did their final draft using paper pencil. Once that was done the students were paired up with an adult and they used Shadow Puppet to download pictures to add to their reports, then they read their research into the app and used the final digital copy to present to their peers.

1. Creativity and Innovation: Students were researching animals so no new ideas or trends were created. They did use a couple of different graphic organizers as models to follow throughout the writing process. 

2. Communication and Collaboration: Students collaborated with adults to publish their final product and used Shadow Puppet to digitally present their final research product to their peers.

3. Research and Information Fluency: Students researched and organized facts on their animal from a variety of sources. From there they had to organize their information and write their report.

4. Critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making: Students had to make a plan of what information was important to gather and how to manage it.

5. Digital Citizenship: Students practiced safe and legal use of technology when searching the internet for information on their animals, as well as, when they downloaded pictures to add to their report.

6. Technology Operations and Concepts: Together students and adults experienced this as they learned how to use Shadow Puppet and navigated the various sites to gather information and pictures. There was a lot of troubleshooting before it was all said and done, but a learning experience for everyone included.