Sir Ken Robinson. Creativity, diversity, and student choice in education

I spent yesterday binge-watching Sir Ken Robinson on the TED Talk YouTube channel. I found myself nodding my head quite often. Schools today kill creativity. They expect students to fit our mold rather than our schools to fit the individual student. He talked a lot about bringing creativity, the arts, and diversity to schools today. What he didn’t talk about was HOW that should look. I suppose that’s not bad…because he rails against cookie-cutter educational answers. However, I’m interested in how you and your school are bringing these things to education.

I love Ken Robinson’s stuff. I agree, he never really talks about how that should look. I think that’s the point. I think he leaves it open on purpose. Teachers and students need to be given the right to choose how to express themselves. Obviously, I am a huge fan of student created iBooks. Truth is, I don’t care what kids create but they need to be creating things. The creation process is highly creative and we need students who want to do those things and teachers/administrators who will let them happen.

Most watched TED Talk right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Obviously, I’m a fan of Genius Hour and innovation. That takes an enormous amount of admin support and students who are open to a whole new way of thinking. Imagine a teacher saying, “I’m not going to tell you what to study. You figure out what you’re passionate about.”

In my opinion, that is a fault of the ed community, which I’m just as guilty of. We can easily find fault, but we must also find solutions. j

I’d love to do some sort of overnight Hackathon, where teams work on solutions overnight and then present them the next morning.

Think about it… What’s the first thing that gets cut when budgets have to be trimmed? We have so many students that need that creative path. Luckily, there are more and more apps/websites/etc that students can use to foster that creativity.

I want to hear more about the hackathon. Sounds like fun!

Let’s face reality. Teaching to all intelligences is nigh unto impossible WHILE getting all standards covered. (I hate to use the word covered.) This goes beyond tech. The arts, as Nickie said. PE. How does a school cram it all in?

And now the state of Ohio has made that easier: State school board vote eliminates minimum number of school nurses, librarians, counselors, arts teachers

I started another discussion on it. :slight_smile:

It’s just one of my crazy ideas. Need to find a location first, but I envision an event that produces more solutions than questions.

Let’s do a hackathon. Love the idea.

We can only control what we can control. Let’s all begin by changing our own classes one at a time. Eventually, others will follow. If they don’t, they will hate their lives because kids will want to be in the cool teacher’s class. Movement by peer pressure.

Something along the line of this: http://www.codemash.org/ ?

That’s cool. Unfortunately, my husband is the programmer in our family. He breaks things and I fix them! :wink: