Tag: creativity

In A World of Their Own – the features of immersive play

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If you ever have the opportunity just to observe some of the youngest learners in school playing together, make sure you take it. It remains a constant source of fascination and wonder for me to see children immersed in play.

I was lucky enough to work with Reception or Foundation classes in my second year of teaching, when I was planning and teaching ICT lessons across the full primary range – and when some of these youngsters used to think I lived in the computer suite. (Ha! “computer suite” – showing my age!) I was also providing cover for staff and so might be in Year 6 in the morning and then doing phonics sessions with Foundation in the afternoon.

A good few years later I took up a new role as Deputy Principal in a school and taught for a while in the Foundation 2 class. I still recall the experiences and smiles I had during those times with great fondness. And I got to witness that immersive play that is so wonderful.

Nowadays I see George, my 8 year old son, immersed in his play, either with his friends or simply on his own. It is a wonder to behold and something that we slowly see less of. The reason I think that I find it so interesting is that it flies in the face of what adult life is so typically about, immersive play doesn’t happen within those rules and challenges the typical constraints adults might see or hold.

The Edges

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of constraint, and healthy constraint at that, in our design of learning. I described how some resources create an artificial line that children don’t go over or how time might restrict what we do. When children are truly immersed in play the edges of their play seem invisible.

It is not simply the timeless nature of immersive play but also the way that physical barriers, and even the rules of physics, become non-existent. They are changed, thwarted and ignored. Superpowers ON! Groups of toys suddenly are thrust together and the props of the play become varied and limitless – the play things even become augmented themselves changing in the mind of the young authors of this new reality.

Presenteeism

When you observe this powerful type of play, a total immersion takes hold. Children get caught up in their play, they lose track of time. They don’t worry about what has gone before or what is next – they don’t think about the to-do list or their worries. When children are safe and immersed in their play, they are wholly present. (There is lots to read about this type of Flow state and the positive impact it can have on learning or the creative process.)

Social

One other curious feature of immersive play is when play overlaps with others. A complete imaginary state bumps into another, children play together seamlessly co-constructing something that is completely imaginary. They negotiate and choose and build together under what seem to be a silent set of rules encoded deep inside them. The social aspect of immersive physical play just feeds the imaginations at work and you see worlds evolve and collapse, characters develop and disappear in quick succession.

All of these beautiful, natural instinctive behaviours might be summed up in this lovely quote:

Children have neither past nor future, they enjoy the present, which very few of us do.

– Jean de la Bruyere

Now of course immersive play is not simply the bastion of the young learner, but perhaps we have to try just that little bit harder to build and collapse those worlds as easily.

What do you see as the signals of immersive play? When do older students and adults get the opportunity for such wholly present experiences?

Finding the edges of your page

28 Days of Writing, Design ThinkingPublished onUpdated on3 Comments on Finding the edges of your page

lego

Not to be confused with restraint which is much more about self-control, constraint is about finding the edges of the page before you begin, it is about knowing what limits you have in terms of resources. It is about must haves and must nots. And to be honest not something I previously worried too much about, but now I see constraint in lots of work that I do and inevitably seek them out if they are not so explicit.

In many ways the 28 Days of Writing project is built around the concept of healthy constraint, about creating an edge where often there isn’t one. A rule to stick to and enjoy the creative challenge. 28 days of writing with a time constraint on how long you can spend every day.

Twitter was such an interesting medium to write through. The constraint of writing within a specific character limit is just second nature now – I always try not to abbreviate or shorten words unnecessarily too. Back when the education community didn’t know it’s tweet from it’s blog it was a fascinating challenge to share your thoughts with such brevity. In many ways this is the most enduring feature of the Twitter platform and certainly something I still enjoy.

Another time when I observed the impact of constraint in a rather unexpected place was a Year 3 classroom in London. The class were all set to build some versions or prototypes of their new house/dwelling ideas they had been intricately designing on paper. Detailed diagrams and rough drafts overlapped on the tables as the class clamoured to discover what was next for their ideas. LEGO makes a similar introduction when used in most classroom, eyes light up and ideas roll over in the mind. However something unexpected happened once construction of the next prototypes commenced. Constraint.

Boys and girls grabbed LEGO baseboards to build on and suddenly fell into a steady rhythm of stacking bricks around the edges, the cuboid house once again asserted it’s dominance. It was a fascinating thing to reflect upon for Meshendia (the classteacher) and I once all was said and done. The LEGO had in fact imposed its own constraint to the process and those baseboards even more so. What were dreamy, intricate designs on paper soon became cookie-cutter boxes in LEGO.

I think this happens a great deal once we are up to our armpits in the making process, the standard classroom doesn’t quite cater for the resources our ideas truly need. Why would they? After all if we are not given enough signals of the constraints in the early stages of a process when we are encouraging new ideas, those ideas will grow and expand without an edge to them.

I was with a school in Perth last week and the very same thinking task for one group of 3 teachers produced completely different results compared with another. The reason. Simply the size of the paper they chose to work on. One group had a large sheet of flipchart paper and their ideas were more numerous, sprawling and often tangential. The other had an A4 piece of paper, the group’s ideas were fewer, focused, more potent. Same task, just a different piece of paper. For one the edges were tighter, closer and more constrained – for the other much more open and freer. The constraint, or lack of, impacted on the type of thinking the group achieved.

A Prototyping Disposition

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I bump into different views of what “prototyping” is, should be or could be quite regularly. It is interesting to try and help people, especially educators, change the way they perceive a word and begin to use it, even understand it, in new ways. After all language is such a decisive factor in our willingness to understand and so to change.

Although not a designer by trade I know that prototyping is about making versions of something, creating various attempts and that these attempts have a trajectory. A direction they are heading towards. An outcome their production is seeking. I get that this is an iterative approach, resting on the knowledge that we will gradually get better through advice and comment from others.

Ultimately though a prototype’s success lies in the mindset or disposition that they are created with. Or to say it more clearly, when we make stuff if we are iterative in our approach we are more likely to succeed. But there is a lot going on if we begin to consider prototyping as not just about making something, but a disposition too.

It is not just about junk modelling or computer aided design or 3D printing or physical building – a disposition towards prototyping means we:

  • Are committed to the expertise and ideas we might gain from others and don’t just simply rely on our own perspective.
  • Believe in the value of feedback and how critique can move our ideas forward.
  • Engineer as many opportunities for feedback as we can, as early as we can.
  • Are willing to share what we create when it is extremely, painfully incomplete.

Learning, and often learning within a school, can be such a creative process, I know that teaching is one of the most creative of professions I know. The prototyping disposition is a stance we need to consider for our learners and for ourselves.

All too often our design of the creative tasks we ask our students to embark upon do not signpost these perspectives. Constraint is rare and we open the doors for our students to emotionally commit to a project, a creation, whether prose or painting it is much the same.

Simply stating the traits of an iterative or prototyping approach is far from enough – we need to consider how we can design them into scaffolded or modelled tasks. For example increasing the constraint of resourcing and time when we get started.

“You have 5 minutes to write the first 2 sentences and yes you can only use a post-it note. Ready go!”

What comes next is easy to understand – feedback and feedforward. Next steps and critique. So much has been written about the high impact on student outcomes of high quality feedback that I do not have to restate it. What perhaps does need pointing out is how woven it is into the fabric of an iterative creative process. So let us look again at how we might model this approach in all of our work and consider ways to engineer multiple versions followed up with as many feedback opportunities.

Prototyping is not just about physical modelling, it is an iterative mindset towards anything that we, or our students, create.

Join me for #28daysofwriting – developing a writing habit

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5.11pm

I don’t know about you but I seem to have an endless list of ideas for things I am going to write about, a smattering of drafts ready to go, and not quite the writing habit to get them published. You may also suffer from blog guilt! You may have a publishing space that you want to re-energise and kickstart again – getting back to a time when you were rattling off posts left write and centre.  Inspired by similar  ideas in the past – like 750words and nanowrimo – I thought I would start something up around the simple approach:

Write everyday for 28 minutes for 28 days. #28daysofwriting

Writing Chunks
The time frame seems manageable in our hectic lives and is often the hurdle for me publishing posts, just spending too long on them! Hopefully you will agree that we should be able to find a  28 minute chunk of uninterrupted writing time during any given day – especially if we are committed to developing such a habit.

A Creative Habit
And that is very much what this is about – getting into a strong, sustainable writing habit that lasts. Who knows whether 28 days is enough but I am up for sticking at it and seeing where I am by then.

Building a Writing Community
Blogging has had an immeasurable impact on my professional life and yet I know I can still be a better writer. Writing regularly helps so much, but it is also about the social platform that is blogging. Sharing with others, with a network, a community. I feel that the blogging community has changed, especially within education, and so this idea is also about building strong(er) communities of writers.

Not Posting Perfection
One of the hurdles for me in my recent writing days has been trying to craft that epic post, that idea or piece of writing that keeps burgeoning – it seems to go on forever and needs to be just so before we hit “Publish”. The healthy constraint of time will help us all to publish. To just publish what we have and be content with that. Sharing early thoughts is sometimes more valid than waiting till the idea is just how we want it before we share it – such behaviour can only lead to a closed or fixed mindset. Write for 28 minutes and publish what you have and then enjoy the conversation that occurs. Don’t aim to publish perfection, we are successful if we just publish.

So if some of these problems and challenges resonate with you. If you are also keen to restart your writing habit and be part of a small community of supportive peers who comment on each others work then sign up in the form below to show you are interested in taking part.

 

I will share some more information soon and I think we will get started from the 1st of February as the month meets our requirements pretty well!

Don’t forget to share this post with others who you think it would be relevant for – use the hashtag #28daysofwriting – we will also use this to flag when we have published our work. I hope to see your name pop up on the list of those interested and I look forward to connecting with you all.

And yes this post took me 28 minutes!
#28daysofwriting
5.39pm

Creative Learning is Relational

Creativity, LearningPublished on11 Comments on Creative Learning is Relational

There is a great deal written about creativity these days, the need for it in our schools, ideas for fostering it in our physical environments and praise for those icons from the past and present who seem to epitomise the creative mindset. The following is a quote from Bruce Nussbaum, a writer and teacher, on the definition of creativity or being creative. The quote has always been something I reference as it so plainly states the key aspect of a creative approach.

Creativity is relational. Its practice is mostly about casting widely and connecting disparate dots of existing knowledge in new, meaningful ways. To be creative, you’ve got to mine your knowledge. You have to know your dots. – Bruce Nussbaum

As disarmingly simple as it is stated by Nussbaum we are still left with the question of how you actually take action – what can we do in the classroom to foster such dispositions and put into place such processes? I thought I would share a few ideas with you all from my experience of working with design thinking in the classroom for inquiry but also as a strategic process for school improvement.

Casting Widely

Design thinking inquiry processes would signpost the practice of “casting widely” as Immersion – an initial period of time where you are learning broadly about a curriculum topic. If we continue the analogy further – we are not casting a single line for a single target but looking to cast a net that gives us the flexibility and breadth of study. Designing and planning for learning experiences that are multi or trans-disciplinary is the order of the day here. We have the ability to engineer these broad learning experiences by thinking about other subject domains, other areas of study that are relevant and probably most importantly sharing our intentions with colleagues and students to help you find those missed opportunities.

Time for Tangents

With strong provocations and engaged learners you will have momentum during Immersion. This magical sense that your class are fuelling the inquiry themselves. However we have to be intentional again about providing time for tangential study. What I mean by this is ensuring there is enough room in your own planning so that groups or individuals, or even the whole class, can explore an unexpected idea to a satisfying degree of depth. All too often we tighten our grip on what has to be covered and dampen enthusiasm for exploring tangential ideas for study due to a lack of time. Nussbaum describes these ideas as “disparate dots” – give learners the time to be able to uncover these untrodden paths, pull back the vines and discover something new and unexpected. Importantly though we have to be intentional about this commitment of time, in my opinion, we can’t just bolt it on – we should be positive, back ourselves and plan for the fact that our engaged learners will discover some unexpected paths.

Developmental Learning Space

When we are working with a burgeoning amount of information we have to be able to make use of a space to keep those elements of interest and study within our eyeline. A developmental learning space grows with the learning experiences of the group or individual. Preferably this is a physical space or board that is populated with all of the “dots” of new and existing knowledge and learning experiences. Where there are physical limitations you might create a shared digital space, but for the youngest of learners the tangible output of our collective inquiry is most useful. I have often called this a project nest – a space that we can stand in front of and scan the “disparate dots” of our study so far.

Teachers from Melbourne Catholic Schools working on hexagonal thinking task.
Teachers from Melbourne Catholic Schools working on hexagonal thinking task.

Making Connections

There are lots of ways to act upon Nussbaum’s intentions of connecting up the dots. When working with teachers we talk about the second step of design thinking inquiry being Synthesis – connecting our learning. A simple way to do this would be to use the physical artefacts collected in the classroom (see above) and move them around, sorting, ordering and rubbing them up against each to see what ideas emerge. Another activity to help would be the use of a hexagonal thinking task which helps learners filter for some of the most interesting pieces of information and then encourages them to tesselate the hexagons and justify the connections that emerge. Those of you who are familiar with the SOLO Taxonomy would of course have recognised Nussbaum’s phrase when he describes creativity as being “relational” – we could broadly state that learning is the same. We know that when learners begin to offer explanations of how ideas or knowledge relate to each other they are demonstrating much higher order thinking.

Use images for learners in the early years to support their thinking.
Use images for learners in the early years to support their thinking.

Mining Knowledge

I have been saving to the online bookmarking tool Delicious for a long time now and many years ago I soon realised that I was not really using the links that I saved with any regularity. But what I was doing was building a resource with which I could later dig, or mine for ideas. When returning to the thousands of links saved there I want to be able find and resurface ideas I have gathered. Nowadays I use Evernote (and still have any Tweeted links saved into Delicious and funnelled into Evernote) for the mining and it is a great way to find existing content for curriculum planning and for unearthing old links or resources. Another way to do this is by using the Evernote Web Clipper – an extension for Chrome – which provides search results from your Evernote account alongside a normal set of Google search results. You can switch this option on in the extension settings.

There are many more ways to put into action what Bruce Nussbaum states as the practice of creativity and it would be great to hear your thoughts in the comments on how else we can act on such intentions. Hopefully these practical ideas give you some simple steps to engineer the best conditions for creative learning.