Assessing Creativity

I had a lovely chat with three colleagues from Burnside School in the North East on Friday afternoon. Despite a dodgy Skype connection we managed to discuss our respective school contexts and the issue of how to establish and assess creativity and/or creative learning both within and beyond the arts.

At Burnside they have developed, in partnership with the excellent Susan Coles (@theartcriminal on Twitter) a framework for assessing creativity as a separate subject within the arts curriculum (see images above). The one hour a week course blends aspects of the arts disciplines taught at the school - art, music, dance and drama - but with an explicit focus on developing creative capacity and learning skills. We discussed the pros and cons of teaching creativity within the arts and the responsibility of other curriculum areas for teaching and assessing creative learning attributes.

I shared out brief flirtation with a Creative Learning APP framework and the Creativity Wheel that was created by the Centre for Real World Learning at the University of Winchester. I also talked briefly about our Tallis Lab experiments at KS3 and our commitment to creative learning in the context of ICT.

I really hope we can continue to share ideas and thinking about this area of curriculum development. I also hope that the team at Burnside is able to create a blog to document the progress of their work in this area. I am sure colleagues across the country would be interested in what they have to share.Thanks again to Susan for putting us in touch.

An alternative curriculum

As part of the Hayward Gallery's Wide Open School in July 2012 members of the Huddle, the Southbank Centre's young people's group, worked with artist Yara El-Sherbini to come up with an alternative syllabus. Exploring important life lessons you can't take a class in -- how to avoid people you know on the bus, how to believe in government, how to stop comparing yourself to people you went to school with -- the Huddle staged an intervention in the Royal Festival Hall, taking over the public announcement system to ask the public what they thought. 

This would be a fantastic cross-curricular project to undertake in school, drawing on the experiences of young people and their curiosity about life and learning. Like cultural institutions, schools are equipped with public address systems, bells that tell you you where to go and when, a programme of activities and a team of backroom and front of house staff. Wouldn't it be interesting to try to disrupt this system of activities, roles and responsibilities, even for just one day, to reawaken our curiosity and love of learning?

Pif Paf: creative computer science

PifPafPresentation7min.mov from Al Ma on Vimeo.

 When we decided that the school uniform needed refreshing we could have adopted two different strategies:

1. decide on an off-the-shelf solution from known suppliers and not worry too much about the design or the ethical or environmental impact of the production process
2. establish a student led design group to work with a qualified designer experienced in ethical fashion to create a bespoke solution

Obviously, we decided on the second strategy and we were lucky enough to work with the fabulous Alina Moat, a recent graduate from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion. She came highly recommended by the equally fabulous Professor Helen Storey with whom we have been on a number of creative learning adventures. The entire project is documented on this blog.

Alina recently visited our new building to see the students wearing her designs. It was lovely to see how pleased she was with the end result of the project and we are equally proud of the fact that our students are wearing clothes that are genuinely sustainable and distinct. Alina's real reason for visiting however was to tell us about her latest design project and to ask whether we would be interested in collaborating with her. Entitled Pif Paf, the project aims to teach young people how to use programming software by employing a number of creative learning strategies.The video above describes succinctly how a playful combination of physical, emotional and intellectual enquiry results in students mastering complex processes.

We are hopeful that we can support the next phase of the project, testing the model with a class of Year 7 students over several months as part of our Tallis Lab curriculum. We are very excited about the potential of working alongside Alina again on such an innovative solution to the issue of rebooting computer science education in the UK.

Progression in Creativity report

The Progression in Creativity: Developing New Forms of Assessment report has been published on the CCE website. Year 9 students at Tallis took part in one of the field trials in collaboration with The Centre for Real World Learning (CRL) led by Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas at The University of Winchester. The aim of the research was to establish the viability of creating an assessment framework for tracking the development of young people’s creativity in schools. Initially an assessment tool was established by the researchers (see above).

This tool comprised of 5 habits and 15 sub-habits of creativity:

1. Inquisitive (wondering and questioning, exploring and investigating, challenging assumptions)
2. Persistent (sticking with difficulty, daring to be different, tolerating uncertainty)
3. Imaginative (playing with possibilities, making connections, using intuition)
4. Collaborative (sharing the product, giving and sharing feedback, cooperating appropriately)
5. Disciplined (developing techniques, reflecting critically, crafting and improving)

Following two field trials the principal findings were that:

1. The concept of an assessment framework for creativity in schools is valid and relevant. There was a strong sense among teachers that our framework encompassed a learnable set of dispositions. There are strong grounds for now seeking to develop a more sophisticated prototype, of use to teachers and learners, to track the development of creativity in schools.
2. The framework should initially focus on the 5-14 age range, although some practitioners may find it useful with younger and older pupils.
3. The evidence suggests that the primary use of any assessment framework will be formative, supporting pupils to harness more of their creativity and helping teachers more effectively to cultivate creative dispositions in the young people they teach.

As the report indicates "measuring creativity, for teachers, would appear to be a fundamentally different task from measuring literacy or even assessing performance in the creative arts."

Recommendations for further development include from the team include:

• Maintaining the emphasis on the learnability of creativity;
• Development of training materials and ‘best practice’ resources for teachers;
• Incorporating the tool into schools’ reporting systems;
• Separation of the sub-habits back into three distinct sub-habits;
• Scrutinising language and selecting a clearly legible printed font;
• Developing best practice;
• Developing a more formative tool to point pupils to areas for development;
• Capturing ‘breadth’ more systematically in the tool;
• Developing a more systematic evidence collection process;
• Developing the tool for the virtual environment; and
• Trialling the tool with the ‘unconverted’.

Read the Report

iStopMotion on the iPad

I've just discovered that iStopMotion is available for he iPad with the addition of the free remote camera app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I think this is going to form the backbone of a scheme of work for the equally new GCSE photography course! I just need to give some thought to keeping the iPhone/iPod/iPad steady during image capture. Looks like a bit of research into mini tripods is in order. 

 

Education Evolution

Sir Ken Robinson posted a link to this video and related website on Twitter recently. I really like the way these students have become advocates for a different type of education, one that is reflected in the learning spaces we inhabit as much as it is by the curriculum. It made me reflect on the role of the beanbag in class, the perceived need for interactive whiteboards at the front of the room and the role that mobile technology should play in learning (in and out of school). It also made me think about how we get the most out of the various learning spaces we will have in the new building, specifically the circulation and public spaces, the in-between spaces, and whether new kinds of furniture might be required to enable informal learning experiences to blossom.

The posts on the project blog are interesting too. The most recent one reveals the trials and tribulations of digital communication. After a brief flurry of interest near the publication of the initial video on YouTube, the class became disheartened that it had not gone viral. However, their message had certainly hit home at a local level, garnering an emotional response from the school's district superintendent. Now, it appears, the video has been picked up and promoted by various folks and is gathering a broader audience.

The construction of an online campaign is a fantastic way for young people to learn about digital tools but, most importantly, provides them with an opportunity to have their voices heard beyond the classroom and/or school where they happen to study. In the process, they can learn about the rights and responsibilities of authors and publishers, the etiquette of the internet, the various techniques for building (and keeping) an audience and the need to support their online campaign with all the conventional features of democracy: meetings, interviews, ballots, speeches, conferences etc.

I really hope this campaign continues to develop and reach educators and young people (and perhaps even politicians) across the globe. I wish the young people responsible for it every success in developing their already considerable skills.

The Finland Phenomenon

This week I shall be mostly investigating the education system in Finland.

What is Project Based Learning?

Let Jeff Robin from High Tech High explain...

And here's what it's NOT in case you were wondering.

PS Thanks to Tammy Parks from Howe High School for the link.

Hip Hop Genius: Remixing Education

Love this!

De-Schooling Society

I saw this today doing a search on Vimeo for videos tagged with learning. Strangely, it articulates an idea that is quite prominent in a book I'm also reading by Ivan Illich called 'De-Schooling Society'. Remember our Pop Up School concept that we presented in Oklahoma and our failed Skills Swap experiment from last year?

What all of these things have in common is a question about the role of schools in the 21st century. What are schools for? Where does learning take place? What is the purpose of education? These are the vital questions facing us in thinking about our move to the new school.

What are your thoughts?

Re-creating America

Check out this film about creative learning in Oklahoma:

For much of its history, the word "America" has stood for the brightest ideas, the most resourceful solutions and the most provocative insights. Is this still true today, and if not, what can we do? The film explores the importance of creativity in education by highlighting four schools in Oklahoma and assessing how the state's teachers are attempting to teach and promote creativity: Educare Preschool in Tulsa, OK: serving a low-income, at-risk community; Flower Mound Elementary School in Lawton, OK: integrating the arts into the entire curriculum with the A+ Schools initiative; Odyssey of the Mind, a creative problem-solving competition at Piedmont Middle School; Santa Fe South Charter High School in Oklahoma City: helping students overcome the challenges of poverty and the high drop-out rate in America's urban high schools. The program asks teachers, parents and national experts: what appear to be the most effective ways to promote creativity, while still teaching the three Rs, and even improving test scores?

Space to Learn

Whilst out shopping with my family today I also following this fascinating conversation on Twitter initiated by Ian Yorkston (who says men can't multi-task?) It began with a photograph of a plane that is being used by a Nottingham school as a classroom. Bizarrely it cost less to buy and refurbish than a conventional classroom would have taken to build. Imagine climbing into an old aeroplane for your afternoon lesson? Brilliant. Soon, there was news of other innovative classroom spaces with a transport theme - long boats, WW2 gliders and a London bus. I contributed our Pop Up gallery/Classroom 'The Crate' as another example of how schools are experimenting with unusual spaces in which to learn. I was also reminded of a project a while ago where a primary school were asked to imagine that their school had sunk to the bottom of the ocean and that their task was to find ways of returning it safely to dry land. How much more engaging would this amazing project have been if the students had a mini submarine parked in their playground? Another example of this kind of immersive learning activity is the Matching Green 'Nerva' project that was featured in Stephen Heppell's Be Very Afraid showcase. What if those students, as well as communicating online with operatives in Mission Control at the local CLC, could have solved their various problems from the confines of a spacelab in the school carpark?

The Free School idea may prove to be a turning point in our thinking about suitable environments for learning or it may be merely an interesting footnote in the story of educational innovation in the UK. We may yet see schools popping up in old Post Offices, banks and shopping centres. Our new school building will be ready in about 10 months time. We certainly hope that we will have sufficient, highly specified rooms in which to learn and teach. Some of them will look and feel very different to the bog standard spaces we currently use. We will have a TV broadcast room, for example, and an Olympic standard Dojo. These spaces will hopefully be unusual and inspiring places, partly because they will look and feel like professional working environments. We will also have some outside classrooms, embedded in the landscape, that will provide opportunities for classes to work outdoors.

One of the exciting things about the Nottingham aeroplane classroom is the element of surprise that often accompanies great learning. Stepping into the cockpit of the plane or taking a seat in the fuselage would definitely transport me to a different world and possibly help me to remember the lessons I learned there. What additional outdoor, mobile, flexible learning spaces might we still need in our future school?

Manifesto for a Creative Tallis

Thanks to Ms Keville and Ms Piwko we have begun the process of re-thinking our Manifesto for a Creative Tallis. The original manifesto, which has been shared with the whole staff body and was ratified by the Leadership Team, has helped to put creative learning at the centre of the school's learning and teaching vision. It is sent out to all new prospective members of staff and a question related specifically to creative learning features in all new job interviews. In our discussions at the start of this year, we felt that the manifesto needed to be revisited. It was perhaps a bit long and not very memorable. It needed a refresh and, possibly, some serious reflection on making the ambitious statements a reality.

Here are Ms Piwko and Ms Keville's initial thoughts, presented in suitably diagrammatic form:


Here is the first draft of the new statements:

WE CELEBRATE CREATIVITY IN OUR COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS

We encourage:

• all learners to become inquisitive, imaginative and innovative
• all learners to take risks, accept challenges and learn from mistakes
• everybody to reflect on their learning experiences

We support our students to become:

• resourceful and active learners
• effective collaborators and communicators
• independent learners/thinkers

We believe:

• in the exchange of skills and knowledge between students and staff
• that the use of new technologies is a crucial part of learning in the 21st century

We value:

• our students' talents, skills and interests and provide opportunities to develop them further
• feedback and ideas from students about their learning experiences
• effective communication about creative learning with parents, carers and members of the local community

We discussed this proposal at our extraordinary meeting before the Christmas holiday and decided to make the following revisions:

(Section 1: We ENCOURAGE……)

• ‘all learners to become curious, imaginative and innovative ( the word curious has replaced inquisitive in the statement )

(Section 2: We SUPPORT……..)

• Resourceful, active and independent learners
• Effective collaborators and communicators
• Co-creators of the curriculum (this statement has been added as we discussed the importance of students creating the curriculum/ learning experiences with teachers)
  

(Section 3: We BELIEVE……)

• in the exchange of skills and knowledge between students and staff.
• that skills should be transferable
• new technologies are a crucial part of learning

We talked about the possibility of employing a graphic designer to help us re-present these statements in a more visually stimulating form, perhaps even creating an interactive web based resource that would allow the viewer to explore some of the implications of each statement with examples of successful creative learning, ideas for further research and short video clips of discussions with students, staff members, parents/carers, experts etc.

Whilst browsing in a book shop this evening I discovered a new book by one of my favourite artists, Keri Smith. It's called 'Mess' and describes itself as a 'Manual of Accidents and Mistakes'. This prompted me to check out her excellent website and Flickr account, where I discovered the following manifesto:

Here is the text in full:

The Rebel's Manifesto:

1. Do the opposite of what you were taught in school.
2. Care not for the opinions of others. They are based on their own thoughts and fears.
3. Study the work of other rebels. Steal things from them. Research with fury.
4. Forget about the competition. They are on a different path than you. Trends are for suckers.
5. "There's nothing we really need to do that isn't dangerous." John Cage. Do the things that scare you on a regular basis.
6. Make a mess.
7. Embrace your darkside. Your so called "dark qualities" (or labels) are a source of great power. Find a way to incorporate them into your work. Feature them. pay particular attention to what makes you angry.
8. Exercise your voice. Put your thoughts out into the world even if it scares the shit out of you (see number 5).
9. Expand your horizons. Leave home. Visit other places/cultures. Wander aimlessly.
10. Never limit your play-time. Even if your brain is telling you otherwise. All of your best stuff comes from it if you allow yourself to remain open to the unknown.
11. Question everything.
13. Follow your heart.

I love this for several reasons. The language is quite informal and includes some direct challenges. It's quite irreverent and funny. It feels exciting and surprising. Number 12 is missing. I wonder if we can learn anything from existing manifestos?

As promised I will begin to do some research about potential sources of funding to employ a designer to help us re-present our Manifesto. In the meantime, I wonder if we ought to give some thought to the next document needed to make the statements in our manifesto more of a reality in school - an implementation strategy.

Learning Score

I've just renewed my version of Learning Score. I haven't really got to grips with it properly but have decided to plan my lessons using it from now on. I like the idea that I can share my thinking about lessons and learning both with students (via the interactive whiteboard) and colleagues. I like the musical analogy and the visual simplicity of the interface. I also like the fact that web links and media can be embedded inside the score so there's less hopping about between tabs in the browser. I think this might be a really great way of making the art of lesson planning more explicit and engaging students in constructing their own learning experiences.

Update:
Here's my first attempt at a Photography lesson. Interestingly, the discipline of thinking about all the elements of the lesson by dragging and dropping the various modules onto the score really helped me conceptualise the kind of learning hopefully taking place. I'll feedback about the lesson tomorrow. I plan to share the score with the students and ask them if they'd like to make any adjustments before we start.

Tallis Mobile

This is a slideshow we are sharing with parents and carers on Tuesday evening at the Year 7 consultation event.

We will soon be officially launching this new project designed to encourage learners in Year 7, and their families, to tell us what makes learning successful for them. We will select 15 families, based on their completion of an online application form and ensuring that the group is representative of our learning community. Each will receive an iPod Touch, complete with several applications preloaded. Students will be encouraged to communicate their experience of successful learning, using a range of strategies, both in and outside school. In addition, we will expect each family to write a blog post reflecting on each week's learning. We are interested in good learning wherever it happens to take place and whoever is responsible for initiating it.

We have set up a blog to capture these stories and a private social network (Ning) to support the participants. We anticipate organising fairly regular get-togethers where we can discuss the project, share great ideas and learn about the latest apps to support learning. We are also hoping to make some of these devices available to members of staff so that we can all contribute to understanding the ways in which mobile, handheld devices can support learning.

Oklahoma!

We have just returned from a really exciting trip to Oklahoma to present our thoughts about creative learning and the future of schools at the Creativity World Forum. Representatives from Thomas Tallis and 2 other London schools (Stormont House and Gallions) took part in a 3 month long collaboration with partner schools in Oklahoma that culminated in our presentation to 1500 delegates at the conference and the establishment of a Pop Up School.

The idea resulted from our investigation of the Pop Up phenomenon in London and beyond - dance, architecture, shops, galleries, all had appeared and disappeared as quickly during the summer of 2010. At Tallis, we had commissioned a Pop Up Gallery/Classroom for the school concourse in which we had installed The Measurement Shop in collaboration with Tangled Feet Theatre Company during our arts festival.

We were interested in the idea that school might become more of an event than a building in the future. Our Tallis Lab curriculum is concerned with exploring the benefits of Web 2.0 tools and a more project based approach to learning and we have begun to make really effective use of blogging, web design and social media. We admired the work of visionaries like Sugata Mitra and the research of Charlie Leadbeater on education innovation.

Our experience at the conference was fascinating. We established a school (of sorts) in an unofficial corner of the conference hall (Booth 100.5) and engaged delegates with a variety of tasks hosted on our #popupschool website. We used Twitcam to broadcast live from the stage during our presentation. We made films, did research, created podcasts - mostly from our new iPod Touch devices equipped with the relevant apps - iMovie, Audioboo, Tumblr etc. The younger students sang songs in the foyer (rather like a Flashmob event) or asked a series of challenging, open-ended questions. We aimed to give our students an opportunity to engage with adults as equals, co-learners and to publish their thoughts and reflections to a real audience online.

The response was very positive:

#popupschool was by far my favourite thing at the #CWF2010 RT @shannoninottawa the future is unwritten http://bit.ly/dzpt4d

One blogger even suggested that the concept of a Pop Up School could apply to music lessons.

The most valuable lesson we learned was just how easy and powerful it is to connect with other learners and learning professionals (we're not very fond of the word teacher) in far off places. Tammy Parks at Howe High School was our partner in the project and has proved to be an inspirational colleague and a leading figure in our PLNs (Personal Learning Networks). We conducted several Skype conversations with her and her students in the lead up to the conference and we were inspired by her story. Howe is literally in the middle of nowhere. It is 3 hours from the nearest town. The school is smaller than one of our year groups at Tallis and, apart from the school building, the only other significant architectural features in Howe are the convenience store and the lumber yard. Despite this, Tammy and her husband Scott (the superintendent of the school district) have created an ICT rich learning environment using state of the art equipment. The school uses a satellite truck to conduct virtual field trips. They have high quality video conferencing equipment and lead learning experiments across the United States. Their physical isolation has been a spur to innovation. In order to give their students access to 21st century learning they have harnessed the power of the internet and the skills of broadcast journalism to connect them with the rest of the world.

Oh, and we met Sir Ken Robinson too. What a trip!

First meeting of the new academic year

The Creative Tallis Action Research Group met for the first time this academic year this morning. We have a great combination of new and existing members with the adults outnumbered by students. We really appreciate the students attending this morning since they would officially start school today an hour later. Some of them, in fact, only came in at all because they belong to the ARG. Very noble!

Our discussion focused on three things:

1. What do we want to achieve this year?
2. Who do want to collaborate with?
3. Who will benefit?

After a detailed and lively discussion we agreed to three foci for the year:

1. Developing a creative learning conference/Teechmeet and supporting the whole school creativity festival in the summer term
2. Establishing a creative learning project with a groups of Year 7 students (and their parents/carers) using handheld technologies. The idea would be to encourage the students to document their positive experiences of learning so that these can be shared with the whole community and inform the development of our pedagogy.
3. Working in collaboration with the maths, English and science faculties to develop inter-disciplinary creative learning strategies, possibly through a Teacher Exchange programme.

Thanks for everyone's contributions today. It promises to be a very exciting year again for us.

Creative Thinking in the Classroom

Image courtesy of Jef Safi

I've just been reading two very interesting blog posts about creative thinking in schools. Lots of the ideas in them will be familiar to you but I really liked the central notion in both that creative thinking is a process of re-thinking through the introduction of deliberate disorganisation. This sounds, on the face of it, a strange process. Why deliberately disorganise your thinking about something? Aren't most educators, especially those with an eye on the fast approaching examinations, hell bent on organising their students' thinking?

The issue, it seems, is that if we move through the thinking process too quickly, we may miss the opportunity to really deepen our understanding of a given topic. Learning comes from experience. We then attempt to understand this experience. Our urge is to apply what we have learned in order to create a record of our learning. But, if we value creative approaches to learning, would we be better off delaying the application phase in order to re-think about our original experience and understanding? What if we jump too soon into a narrow application that provides is a relatively superficial record of our learning? The chances are, in this case, that the learning may not stick since it has not been deep enough.

When given the opportunity to re-explore understandings, the brain often engages in re-comprehension, the sorting of critical details, and re-elaboration, the recognition of new patterns. These new patterns may be new, unique, creative. As the individual examines these new patterns, methods of expressing them may come to mind. These possible expressions are then examined for potential, and if deemed effective, the individual may proceed to producing a creative product.

So, what's involved in this re-thinking? Well, we need to create space and time for our imaginations to work on the original stimulus. We need to explore alternative ways of representing what we understand. We might re-present it to a new audience. We may use metaphor or analogy to compare what we know with something else. We may wish to ask a whole series of questions in an attempt to destabilise what we think we know, to knock it off balance and look at it from a different perspective. Whatever techniques we use to introduce deliberate disorganisation, the chances are that if we allow ourselves the opportunity to reflect, to re-think, when we get to the point where we are ready to reformulate our understanding, we will be able to create a more creative and more deeply realised record of our learning.

I've read a lot of stuff about creativity and creative learning but the ideas contained in these two blog posts come pretty close to summing up my attitude to the value of creative thinking in schools. In case I've misrepresented the thoughts of the authors (by introducing too much deliberate disorganisation of my own) here are the orginal posts:

Creative Thinking in the Classroom Part 1

Creative Thinking in the Classroom Part 2

What are the implications for promoting creative thinking in schools? Here are a few things I would like to see:

• a more integrated curriculum at KS3 with a central focus on developing independent learners through explicit thinking skills activities
• Philosophy for Children built into the core curriculum at KS3 and 4 so that learners acquire an ability to question and reflect effectively
  
• a greater focus on extended, open-ended home learning assignments that encourage students to re-present what they have learned to a variety of real audiences using a range of tools, processes and techniques
• a greater emphasis on teachers developing, maintaining, sharing and debating their preferred pedagogy
  

What would you like to add to this list?

Alice for the iPad

It won't be long before the iPad hits the shops and I, for one, am saving my pennies to get one. This video brilliantly captures the essence of the device. Books become interactive adventures. The internet looks amazing. The app store is already bursting with great content. A new version of iWork is bundled with the device. Imagine a class set of these sitting in the corner of the room? There are already rumours of the next version having a camera on board. Now that really would make it a very desirable learning tool.

What do you think of the iPad? Do you think we should be looking at getting some for school? If not the iPad, then what other mobile computing device would you favour?

Cultural Learning

I've just signed up with the Cultural Learning Alliance. If you believe in the power of cultural learning to transform lives, raise aspiration and bring joy to millions, I strongly suggest you do the same.

Check out the website for more information.