It's another Toolkit...Creativity Out of the Box

'What are children able to achieve when we allow them to be creative?'  is what Amie Williams (toolkit host) prompted us to think about.  What happens when we take the lid off the box...

Amie's slides include many creative resources and ideas including:

• podcasts - students could collaborate to produce these about many things,  so much learning in the process of creating them - then the podcasts become a resource for future learning.
• Scratch/Scratch Jnr - this is something for all ages. Great for storytelling and creating games. Can push the creativity by using other tools to create backgrounds e.g. google draw, photos of local places. A couple of student examples here and here.
• Here is a fabulous way for kids to be create and interactive image in google draw to share information - and teach kids  slides is not the only way!!  A good thing here is it can be successful with only a little writing - it's more multimodal which will appeal to many of our learners.  It's so important children have opportunities to share in different ways.
  
  

Amie asked us to consider how are we building in mechanisms children to get feedback? To encourage revisiting of their learning, to think about the process rather than 'tick, I'm done. next'.  How can we get them to 'version 2.0', the next iteration.  How can we ensure children are sharing 'this is what I learned...this is what I didn't learn...this is what I need to learn next..'?

I thought it was a really good reminder about putting the spotlight on the learning and creative process. So the students aren't always being given 'paint by numbers' tasks or templates.

I agree with Amie's goal/challenge that children are working harder than teachers and on more creative things so teachers are free to have real conversations with students.

Cool thing for those sheet fans!! - Michelle, Alida - and those in collaborative spaces!! - Alida, Shalen - check out this 'creating our learning' tracking sheet Amie kindly shared.  It helps to scaffold the creative process for students and is what she used when teaching in a collaborative space. Amie talked about potentially hiding columns at times and opening them as children at that phase - taking care not to overwhelm students.  

Thanks Amie - this was a great toolkit - really motivating and useful.  

And it was fun to use Jamboard, too.