Is It Possible to Measure Creativity?

By Elizabeth Blair, NPR

Let’s start with a question from a standardized test: “How would the world be different if we all had a third eye in the back of our heads?”

It’s not a typical standardized question, but as part of the Next Generation Creativity Survey, it’s used to help measure creativity a bit like an IQ test measures intelligence. And it’s not the only creativity test out there.

So why bother measuring creativity? James Catterall, a psychologist and director of the Centers for Research on Creativity in Los Angeles, says the simple answer is that if society, business and education demands it, then we need to know when it’s happening; otherwise, we’re just guessing when it’s there.

He says, “Measuring is an important aspect of knowing where our investments pay off.”

Troublemaker Or Misunderstood Creative Genius?

In the late 1950s, a man named E. Paul Torrance was similarly interested in children’s creativity. Torrance was a Georgia farm boy-turned-psychologist, and one of his first jobs was working with boys at a military academy. It was there that he began to see creativity as something that wasmisunderstood. Bonnie Cramond, director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia, says a lot of the boys Torrance worked with were thought to be troublemakers.

“They were high-energy kids with ideas,” she says, “and those don’t always fit into a very structured school situation. And so [Torrance] did a lot of research in how, for example, teachers much prefer highly intelligent kids and often don’t like highly creative kids because they are harder to control and they’re misunderstood.”

Torrance set out to change that, or at least to prove that creativity was as important as intelligence, not just in the arts, but in every field. As part of that mission, he devised a number of ways to test for creativity. Today, the system he created is called the Torrance Test.

Rewarding The ‘More Elaborate Route’

Janet Stanford is the artistic director of Imagination Stage, a professional children’s theater company and arts center in Bethesda, Md. She says when she first heard about the Torrance Test, she was skeptical. “Initially I thought, as many people do, ‘Well, creativity is not something you can measure. It’s this sort of wonderful gift and let’s not question it too carefully.’ ”

But Stanford was curious, so she ordered the test packet anyway, and she also got to see some of the results. In the “figural” section of the test, there’s a page with a large, black egg shape in the middle. Test-takers are asked to make a picture out of it that “no one else will think of.”

“One little boy created a cave out of it,” Stanford remembers. “He put a cliff around it, and so there was a ladder going up to this hole as if it was a great cave. And then there was a Martian or some kind of alien spaceship in the air, and this little boy who was hiding from the aliens. I mean, the world that he created was complete.”

Stanford was intrigued enough that she asked her entire staff to take the test. There was some resistance at first, but then a few members like Lauren Williams learned to grade the test. Williams says that for a test about creativity, it has a lot of unexpected details. Take, for example, the test’s “resistance to premature closure” section, where test-takers are asked to turn lines on the page into a picture somehow. “They look for people who choose not to take the quickest way and to choose a longer, more elaborate route instead,” she says. “And you get points for that.”

Shining Light On A Hidden Problem

The Torrance Test has been translated into several languages and is mostly used for admission to gifted and talented programs. But other creativity tests are also in the works — James Catterall and his team at the Centers for Research on Creativity are still tweaking theirs.

Catterall says they made an interesting discovery while they were testing out their survey: Elementary school kids scored better on it than high school kids did. “I think the expression that many people use is that the schools have a tendency to suck the creativity out of kids over time,” he says.

And that’s a problem — a problem that will require enormous creativity to solve.

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/is-it-possible-to-measure-creativity/

Teachers, Students, Digital Games: What’s the Right Mix?

By Holly Korbey

When St. Louis fifth-grade teacher Jenny Kavanaugh teaches history, she uses her laptop to look at a map, or to give kids a virtual tour of the historical landmarks they’re studying. “Students can interact with history in very cool ways online,” she said.

But when it’s time for math, she puts the computer away. Even though Kavanaugh thinks technology is a great tool to enhance and deepen certain lessons, for drill and practice of key concepts in class, she finds one-on-one practice to be much more effective than its technological equivalent – digital practice games.

“The goal is that a student can do division problems with speed and accuracy, and can also describe to me exactly what division is,” she said. “I have found that my advanced students can move past division of fractions in the online game, indicating mastery, but when I ask for a verbal description of what it is they are really doing – what is the division of fractions, or when would you use that in the real world? – they have no idea. I think that the rote practice is wasted time if the student does not have that conceptual understanding first. Many online games do not teach that part of math as well.”

“The best, complex games require specialized teacher knowledge, interest and skills to use effectively.”

While experts like Gary Stager, founder of theConstructing Modern Knowledge Summer Institute, recommend that computers be used to add “deep and meaningful experiences” to teachers’ lessons, much of what the 91percent of teachers with access to computers are doing may be just the opposite.

According to a recent teacher survey conducted by PBS, 43 percent of classroom computing goes to playing educational digital games, while a Joan Ganz Cooney study showed that nearly 50 percent of teachers use digital games in class. But with nearly half of all classroom computer time dedicated to games — many of which are played to reinforce basic skills like phonics, spelling or multiplication tables — some teachers are wondering if games really are innovative techniques used to enhance student learning. Or are they just flashy, colorful ways of dishing out more of the same?

While Kavanaugh encourages online games for students’ home practice, especially for math, in the classroom she thinks that old-fashioned interaction between humans makes for deeper understanding. She says, in her experience, kids are learning more math from hands-on activities than computers. “What they truly love is to get out of their desks and act things out,” she said. “I think many technological learning tools seem to bring out…how do I say this?…a backseat way of thinking from my students. Part of their brains seem to disconnect.”

Kavanaugh observes that when her students are up doing an activity or engaging in serious problem-solving, they’re much more proactive and aggressive with their learning, and with the things they produce. “Imagine the difference between a student who’s playing an online math video game and a student who’s sitting in a small group with a teacher, working out problems and receiving immediate, individualized feedback and guidance,” she said. “There is no comparison.”

When comparing digital learning games to teacher instruction, the first thing to realize, said Marc Prensky, author of Teaching Digital Natives, is that not all games are created equally. “Games, like teachers, come in a wide variety of ‘goodness.’ Unfortunately, most games are not good. In fact, most are bad, often drill in disguise.” The second, Prensky pointed out, is that teachers may not necessarily know how to use games in classrooms most effectively. “There are many ways to do this [use games effectively], but letting kids sit and play games individually is not one of them. The best, complex games require specialized teacher knowledge, interest and skills to use effectively.”

[RELATED: Can Repetitive Exercises Feed the Creative Process?]

Prensky said another question teachers need to ask when looking at using online games in class is what they want students to get good at. For teaching curriculum, he said, there are very few games that do it well. “This is partly because games lend themselves to skills rather than stuff, and the curriculum is mostly about stuff. In games, ‘stuff’ is learned—as it is in life outside school— mostly incidentally, as background to achieving goals. So, for example, l know that the capital of Sri Lanka is Colombo because I chased Carmen Sandiego there.”

DIFFERENCE IN QUALITY

One game that holds the promise of achieving all the complex goals educators is SimCityEDU, the learning version of the popular city-management game due to be released in the fall of this year. Michael John, Game Director for GlassLab, the nonprofit creating the game, said that, in reality, most practice games are not that fun or interesting for kids. “I would say that most of the drill-type games I have seen and played have fallen very far toward the Tetris end of the spectrum. They’re repetitive, self-similar, and to be honest, pretty dull.”

But as a learning game, SimCityEDU wants to offer much more than drill — student players will be assessing data, interpreting information, taking documentation, and like many complex games, will have the ability to level-up when certain skills are mastered. The game has the ability to make formative assessments along the way that are also aligned with Common Core State Standards; teachers can use an online tool to see whether children have mastered the necessary skills.

It’s the ability to gather such specific data, says Nashville elementary educator and ed tech writer Dan Nemes, that makes online learning games so helpful, even the drill-and-practice kind. As far as being innovative on the learning front, Nemes questions whether a computer game can really replace a great teacher, but acknowledges that not all children have access to a great teacher.

“That question of environment is the real kicker,” Nemes said. “Ed Tech provides access. That can’t be argued. Many of the folks who are developing programs to help children learn are, in my view, saying, ‘The offline world has failed a large number of children. Children don’t have the space and time and tools they need to learn, so I’ve created a virtual world in which they can learn.’ They want to leverage data and ready-made lessons (some of them made by great teachers) to lessen the inequality so many children face.”

The most effective use of the iPad is not digital games, but more hands-on techniques, like using apps that build presentations or take video and slow it down to demonstrate a particular physics concept.

Michael John is quick to point out that SimCityEDU, or any learning game, no matter how challenging and complex, is in no way out to replace individual attention given by real teachers, and called the idea “folly.” He said the game “should work in tandem with a human teacher, and we are investing a lot of creative and technological energy in creating views for the teacher into the students’ activity and even giving them some control over that activity – the ideal learning environment is assumed to be in the presence of a human teacher. So the audience for our formative assessment data, even if it works perfectly, is the teacher every bit as much as the student.”

MORE RESEARCH NEEDED

As we are just entering the era of digital games and learning, research is still scant. The Joan Ganz Cooney Center recently released an in-depth analysis of how schools are using games for learning, and other organizations are starting to tackle this broad, complicated subject. Williams College sophomore Mpaza Kapembwa is part of an education class that received a Verizon grant to write a fourth-grade science curriculum for low-income students using iPads, recording whether or not students are more engaged when using the iPad versus non-digital methods. The most effective use of the iPad so far, Mpaza said, is not digital games, but more hands-on techniques, like using apps that build presentations or take video and slow it down to demonstrate a particular physics concept.

But this summer, Mpaza’s research will focus on turning all physical worksheets into practice on the iPad, and will inevitably turn part of the curriculum toward digital games. “We are very cautious not to replace one with the other, it’s very challenging because when they’ve got the iPad in front of them, they just want to play,” he said. “We do let them play in the very beginning, but then try to get them used to the fact that this is not a toy. This is work.”

Dan Nemes agrees that, when kids are playing games on iPads or other digital gadgets, it can be hard for them to remember that they are working — a different but important kind of “backseat thinking.”

“Even at its most active, swiping and clicking are passive approaches to learning,” he said. “Using a pencil — the smell of the wood and lead, the indentation on your pointer, the sound of the scratch on the page — gives a child the sense of doing hard work. And learning is hard work. The tools children use to manipulate and change the world and their own neural pathways should reflect the profundity of that phenomenon; we should have some blisters, form calluses, break a sweat. Computer games don’t demand that from children.”

The feeling of work, Michael John said, is important to kids when playing a digital learning game, too, something they found out when testing SimCityEDU on middle schoolers. And that work feeling may be what helps kids distinguish between entertainment games and ones that are for learning. “If they understand that their role is to learn, and to think in the context of school, they seem to be almost primed with an expectation of a higher workload.”

Even as he innovates new ways of using digital games expressly designed for student learning, John’s overall comments on learning and gaming seemed to reflect a feeling that computer games, whether drill-and-practice or complex, are meant to enhance, not replace, other more human learning experiences. He doesn’t seem at all concerned that drill-and-practice digital games will replace hands-on teacher-led techniques. Nemes’ comment about the sensory experience of holding a pencil was quite personal to him, and John called it “poignant.”

“As an old-school game designer, I am accustomed to doing my work on graph paper and using mechanical pencils.” While John has come to accept that all of his games are now programmed using spreadsheets and vector drawing software, he also understands the value of hands-on. “I do still value the tactile sense of the pencil however, and keep a pad of graph paper on my desk at all times, and I hope that at least for me, that never goes away.”

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/teachers-students-digital-games-whats-the-right-mix/

10 English Phrases for Being Rich and Poor

Ekspresi yang dipakai untuk sesuatu yang berhubungan dengan keuangan.

1 – I’m short on cash / I’m hard-up / I’m broke.

These phrases are used to describe having very little money. “I’m broke” implies that you have no money available.

2 - My bank account is overdrawn.

When you have no money in your account, and you try to take out more money, we say the account is “overdrawn.”

3 – The company went bankrupt.

To “go bankrupt” means that you don’t have enough money to pay for your financial obligations. A company or a person can go bankrupt. When a company goes bankrupt, it usually shuts down.

4 – He earns minimum wage – he’s just scraping by.

“Minimum wage” is the minimum salary required by law, and “scraping by” means barely managing to survive with very little money.

5 – We’re pinching pennies / scrimping and saving this month.

The expressions “pinching pennies” and “scrimping and saving” mean trying to save money when you have very little money available. It means making changes to your lifestyle to reduce your expenses as much as possible.

6 – She’s quite well-off / wealthy.

Describing someone as “well-off” or “wealthy” means the person is rich. You can also use the word “well-to-do” as an adjective: “My neighbor is a well-to-do businessman.”

7 – They’re loaded / filthy rich.

Both “loaded” and “filthy rich” are slang words that mean a person is extremely rich.

8 – He inherited a fortune.

If a friend or family member dies and gives you their money, you have ”inherited” the money. A “fortune” is a large amount of money.

9 – She’s raking in the money/cash/dough.

If a person is doing something that is very profitable and earning a lot of money, you can say they are “raking in” the money. “Dough” is a slang word for money.

10 – That’s an upscale restaurant.

Describing a place, brand, or product as “upscale” means it is designed for rich people.

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10 English Phrases for Being Rich and Poor (Espresso English)

Beyond Q+A: Six Strategies That Motivate ALL Students to Participate

FEBRUARY 25, 2013 | MADDIE WITTER

Do you have students who rarely raise their hand when you ask a question? When I think back about kids in my classroom who didn't participate at first, I remember Jared and Maya (whose names I changed). Jared was polite, listened to his classmates, and did his homework. But when I asked questions or set up class discussions, Jared remained silent. Maya was really creative and an avid reader. She also didn't participate, frequently had her head down in class, and was reluctant to start work. Some of our students might sit quietly through each lesson or be visibly disengaged. Maybe they don't understand the lesson, are embarrassed, or hesitantly wait for another peer to share. Jared and Maya certainly aren't unique.

I often visit classrooms where I see teachers employ lots of Q+A. Asking questions and calling on raised hands is one way to check for understanding. But Q+A doesn't access 100% of our kids -- especially not kids like Jared or Maya.

How can we get our shiest students, or even our student with her head down in the back of our class, participating? While cold calling, randomizers or pulling a Popsicle stick will ensure students are equally called upon, some students find that approach frightening or annoying. Below are strategies you can try in your class tomorrow that will motivate your Jareds and Mayas to participate.

1. Three Seconds According to researcher Mary Budd Rowe, the average teacher waits 1.5 seconds between asking a question and calling on a student. By increasing the wait time to a mere three seconds, the following occurs:
Accuracy increases "I don’t know" decreases Student responses get longer Achievement on tests increases More students participate
I literally count at least three Mississippis in my head after asking each question.

2. Hand Out Questions in Advance Pre-plan a few questions that you want to ask (Saphier and Haley, 1993), write them on slips, and hand each student one question at the beginning of class. Once it’s time to ask the question, reach out first to the kids who had the question, then to the rest of the class. Try dividing the class into the groups whose members had the same question so that they have a chance to chat first before sharing out.

3. Anonymous Questioning Companies like Socrative and Infuse Learning have designed software to check for understanding that can be accessed via smartphone, tablet or laptop. You can incorporate all types of questions from multiple-choice to short answers, and responses can be anonymously represented via graph. You can then make informed decisions with rapid, real-time data. Kids love it because they get to use technology, feel safe and get immediate feedback.

4. Choice Questions It's important to incorporate questions that have more than one right answer, but broad, open-ended questions can be debilitating. Try incorporating some choices or either/or questions.
Instead of asking, "How are you going to solve today's equation?", try "Would you rather use the simplify or guess-and-check method for today's equation?" Instead of asking, "Which character exemplifies what it means to be a friend?", try "Would Charlotte or Wilbur make a better friend? Why?"

5. Snowball to Avalanche In Reading Without Limits, I share a fun kinaesthetic strategy:
Have a really debatable question? Start the discussion. When a student answers, they become a "snowflake." As students agree with the original student, they move their bodies closer to that student to "build on that snowflake,"’ making a snowball. If you choose a great question, there should be several snowballs throughout the room that eventually, if one side is more convincing, turn into an avalanche. Kids will love showing allegiance to their classmates' ideas. And they can definitely change their minds.
As kids show their allegiance, call on different kids to share out why they are taking that particular stand.

6. Estimation Line-Ups Ask kids a question that has a numerical response based on a sliding scale (Kagan, 1994). Place a number line around your classroom walls. Students stand under their number/answer preparing to share why. Fold the line in half so the students who most strongly disagreed with each other now chat before sharing out to the whole class.
"Our scientific hypothesis is that a plant will grow more near the window than in the closet. How many more inches do you think the plant near the window will grow compared to the one in the closet?" "On a scale of 1-5, 5 being 'strongly agree,' 1 being 'strongly disagree,' should Jack and the boys take Piggy's glasses?"
Traditional Q+A didn't help me access all of my learners. The above strategies increased participation in my classroom, giving me more opportunity to check and support understanding. Getting our Mayas and Jareds to develop the confidence and comfort to participate makes a classroom a true learning community that values all, not just some students' thought.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/6-strategies-motivate-student-participation-maddie-witter?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Learning about Your Students' Backgrounds

By: Colorín Colorado (2007)

Where do my students come from?

Watch children's author and literacy advocate Pat Mora discuss how to reach out to parents of ELLs.

The English language learners (ELLs) in your classroom may represent diverse languages and cultures from around the world. The majority of ELL families in the United States come from Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. These Hispanic families may have many things in common, such as customs, foods, dances, values, and the Spanish language. However, there are also many rich cultural differences within and between countries like Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, and El Salvador.

The more you learn about where your students come from, the easier your job will become. This includes learning more about their language, culture, values, family, and home environment. This knowledge will help you to better support your students in the classroom and to receive more support from home. There are many ways to make this linguistic and cultural diversity a huge asset. Your efforts will also make ELL students feel more welcome.

View a list of the many languages (with percentages) spoken by ELLs in the United States, 2000-2001.

Language

At home, your ELL students and their families communicate in the language they know best. Although there are regional and social variations of Spanish, Spanish is one commonly understood language.

The more Spanish that you know as a teacher, the more you will be able to reach out to your Hispanic students and their families. Even a little Spanish can go a long way. Here are a few things that you can do:

Learn a few basic words and everyday expressions in Spanish

Although it may seem like a small gesture, using Spanish phrases can mean a great deal to your students and their families. Making the effort shows that you respect and value their language. These lists of Spanish/English cognates andcommon classroom words and phrases will help get you started.

Try taking a Spanish class

Learning more Spanish will improve your communication with Hispanic students and their parents. And by going through the process of learning a second language, you will better understand the challenges faced by your students, who have to learn English and subject matter at the same time. You will also become more aware of effective strategies for teaching your students.

Culture

Try to really learn where your ELL students come from. Move beyond the "Latino/Hispanic" label. Is this student a Mexican immigrant or a second generation Mexican American? Is he or she from Central America, a Caribbean island, or South America? Your students and their families have interesting histories and a rich cultural heritage to share.

Here are two things you can do to learn more:

Inform yourself

Read about your ELL students' countries, regions, and customs. You can find information in books, articles, and on the Internet. Even just looking in encyclopedias or travel guidebooks will give you a basic overview of their countries.

Invite their culture into the classroom

Invite students and/or family members for show-and-tell, story-telling, food tasting, dancing, etc. Doing this will likely raise the self-esteem of ELL students and generate greater respect from their peers.

Values

Hispanic families often immigrate to the United States with high hopes for better educational opportunities for their children that can lead to economic improvement. Even if parents do not speak English or cannot read in Spanish, they often share some of the following values and beliefs about education:

Respect for the teacher and school

In Latin America, parents tend to put teachers on a pedestal. They respect education. It is assumed that the teacher's job is at school and the parent's job is at home.

Hispanic parents in the United States care deeply about their children's education, but they may not be used to taking an active role. It is up to you, the teacher, to explain that in the United States it is common for teachers to welcome and invite parents to be in touch, come in for conferences, help with reading and homework at home, and make decisions together with the school.

High expectations

Hispanic parents in the United States tend to make big sacrifices for the future of their children. They often move far from home and work long hours so that their children can succeed in school and in life. So it is no surprise that these parents have high expectations and aspirations for their children's success in school.

Family relationships

Family is often the cornerstone of Hispanic social structure. Families have a strong sense of interdependence, mutual respect, and co-parenting. Grandparents, godparents, aunts, uncles, and older siblings may be helping to raise your ELL students. This extended family might live at home, visit frequently, or live nearby. Many Hispanics travel back and forth between their native country and the United States. Understanding this family structure might help you to gain trust and participation from both the immediate and extended family members.

Home environment

Although you do not want to pry for information, the more you can find out about where your students come from, the better you will understand their strengths, needs, and real-life circumstances. One way to find out is to get to know their families — whether at school, in their home, or in the community. But if a family is very reluctant to meet with you, respect their wishes and understand that they may have good reasons for this.

Having answers to the following questions may help you to better work with your students and their families:

• Who lives at home? Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings? How many of them speak English? How many know how to read in English and/or Spanish?
• How long have they been in the United States? Why did they come?
• How familiar are they with the U.S. school system?
• What is the child's prior educational experience?
• Has the child been formally instructed in English before? If so, for how long?
• Do they come from a big city or a rural town?
• Does your student have a quiet place to study? Is there someone to help with homework?

Most of this information can also be obtained by using a written "Getting to Know You" survey or through informal conversations.

Learn more about identifying your students' language preferences and abilities.

Reaching out

Children's author and literacy advocate, Pat Mora, discusses how teachers and librarians can reach out to parents of ELLs.

http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/14311/

Chain story telling

By

Arizio Moreira, Hamilton, New Zealand

In this speaking activity the students tell personal stories which are prompted by pictures. The activity is performed as a mingle.

·         Cut up cards of different objects, activities, animals, etc. selected randomly.

·         Place the cards scattered on the floor in the middle of the classroom.

·         Tell the students to pick up a card from the floor which they think makes them remember one of the following:
(a) a memorable event in their lives
(b) a positive or negative past or recent experience or
(c) a story about a friend/family member/acquaintance/etc that they would like to share with others.

·         Tell the students that they must find another in the class and tell them what the picture makes them remember and listen to the other person’s story too.

·         Each student must tell their story for about one to two minutes only.

·         Students then must exchange pictures and find another student to talk to.

·         Emphasise that they must ask the name of the person they were talking to before they move on to talk to another one.

·         Students must then talk to another student and tell him/her the story of the person they last talked to.

·         Students swap pictures again and move on to talk to someone reporting the story they’ve just listened to.

·         Round the activity off by asking individual students to report to the class the interesting things they’ve learned about other people in class.

Teaching Conversational Skills - Tips and Strategies

When employing role-plays, debates, topic discussions, etc., I have noticed that some students are often timid in expressing their viewpoints. This seems due to a number of reasons:

• Students don't have an opinion on the subject
• Students have an opinion, but are worried about what the other students might say or think
• Students have an opinion, but don't feel they can say exactly what they mean
• Students begin giving their opinion, but want to state it in the same eloquent manner that they are capable of in their native language
• Other, more actively participating students, feel confident in their opinions and express them eloquently making the less confident students more timid

Pragmatically, conversation lessons and exercises are intended to improve conversational skills. For this reason, I find it helpful to first focus on building skills by eliminating some of the barriers that might be in the way of production. Having been assigned roles, opinions and points of view that they do not necessarily share, students are freed from having to express their own opinions. Therefore, they can focus on expressing themselves well in English. In this way, students tend to concentrate more on production skills, and less on factual content. They also are less likely to insist on literal translations from their mother tongue.

Implementing this approach can begin slowly by providing students with short role plays using cue cards. Once students become comfortable with target structures and representing differing points of view, classes can move onto more elaborated exercises such as debates and group decision making activities. This approach bears fruit especially when debating opposing points of view. By representing opposing points of view, students' imagination are activated by trying to focus on all the various points that an opposing stand on any given issue may take. As students inherently do not agree with the view they represent, they are freed from having to invest emotionally in the statements they make. More importantly, from a pragmatic point of view, students tend to focus more on correct function and structure when they do not become too emotionally involved in what they are saying.

Of course, this is not to say that students should not express their own opinions. After all, when students go out into the "real" world they will want to say what they mean. However, taking out the personal investment factor can help students first become more confident in using English. Once this confidence is gained, students - especially timid students - will be more self-assured when expressing their own points of view.