This article Grow Creativity! is a great read and would be very beneficial to all teachers. I think one of the most difficult things for students to do is to be creative. This article goes through the different characteristics that lead to creativity, and also how your students can reach them. These characteristics are: Fluency, Flexibility, Originality, and Elaboration. I think that a lot of students struggle with creativity and these four characteristics. I know I sure do, and whenever a teacher asked me to be creative I would always mention that I'm not creative at all. My lack of creativity would often cause me to spend more time thinking about the projects then actually doing them. How often do you see students sitting at their desks, because they do not know what to do. Not because of the assignment either, but because they simply do not know what to do it on. I think if teachers actually taught their students these four traits and how to be creative it would enhance a students performance and abilities.
The article also discussed how a teacher can use web 2.0 tools to help in this process. After examples about how to build creativity in the four characteristics the article gives examples on how to use the web tools to do that. For example: to help build originality in your students try having them do a project from scratch using any of the following web tools: Blabberize, Bubblr, comic makers, Dabbleboard, DoInk, GlogsterEDU, GoAnimate, Queeky Scrapblog, Scribblar, Tagxedo, Voicethread, Vuvox, Wallwisher, and Xtranormal. Their is a lot of online tools that the article just listed that can help your students learn originality and creativity. I think if I would have been using these tools from day one of my education, I may not have such a hard time coming up with something creative to use.
A side topic of this article was that one of the teachers featured in it was from St. Mary's in Berea, OH. I lived in Berea for five years, and this school was just a few blocks away. It's nice to see that this innovation and these technology tools we discuss are going on all around us.
I guess we need to teach creativity like any other subject. We wouldn't say to a first grader "go do math" without instruction. On the other hand creativity can be encouraged by handing students a bunch of tools and materials and saying, "I wonder what we can make with what we know and what we have?"
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