Teaching for creativity

In a recent interview with the New York Times[i], Laszlo Bock, the Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google said the following:

“…the number one thing we look for (in an applicant) is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. – it’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information.”

For our pupils to succeed in the modern world, they need to be able to think creatively. In her article “Teaching for creativity: from sage to guide to meddler”[ii], Erica McWilliam makes a convincing case for seeing creativity in lessons as a core learning outcome. The trend for employers to value creative skills means that our pupils will not be successful in the modern world unless they can think creatively. How are they to develop those creative skills necessary for success in life if their teachers value rote-learning over creative thinking?

McWilliam’s article goes on to explore three different models for a teacher; the Sage on the stage, the Guide on the side, and she proposes a new model: the Meddler in the middle. The Sage tends to lead from the front, spending the majority of her effort enthusing and engaging her pupils. She is a skilled orator, and can generate enthusiasm and excitement. However, there can be the tendency for the class to remain passive while the teacher remains the expert. The Guide spends the majority of her time coaching and helping students through a series of pupil-led tasks. McWilliam makes the argument that “…this (approach) can often collapse into passive child-minding and worksheet distribution”. The Meddler creates opportunities for hands-on learning collaboration that puts everyone in the thick of the action. By its nature, this requires the teacher to spend less time talking; to allow her pupils to take risks and make mistakes; to work collaboratively and creatively.

Of course, there are many ways in which digital tools can enable a pupil to work collaboratively and creatively. Recently, as I have blogged before, I have been experimenting with making stop-motion animations with classes in science lessons, using the iOS software “I can animate”. A typical animation lesson involves minimal talk time from the teacher and pupils have found it relatively easy to get on with using the software. Pupils certainly take risks and make mistakes; the animations do not always look great at first go, and a few iterative cycles are usually necessary to get something that pupils are pleased with. There are great opportunities for collaboration too; while pupils may create an animation in pairs, they are always keen to see the results of other groups’ work. This is where I have been most impressed with the merits of creating animations as a teaching tool; pupils have spontaneously peer-assessed each other’s work, commenting on the technical accuracies of each others’ animations. I have rarely been able to engineer such high quality peer-assessment in the past.

The lesson, too, develops those processing skills that Laszlo Bock is looking for in new employees at Google. For example, armed with their understanding of particle motion, pupils must apply creative thinking to making their animations scientifically accurate, but also visually appealing in a limited time-frame. Let’s hope that some of them one day get the opportunity to show him what they have learnt!

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[i] The New York Times (2014, 22 February), How to get a job at Google; http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html

 

^[ii] Erica McWilliam (2009): Teaching for creativity: from sage to guide to meddler;

Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 29:3, 281-293; http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188790903092787

Creating animations in science lessons

Animations aid understanding

Pupils have been watching animations in science lessons for years; educational films use animations to help to explain a model or underlying micro-structure. More recently, web-technology has increased the access to animations, and animations feature on an increasing number of web-pages describing a scientific concept.

A couple of years ago, while teaching a junior physics class about Brownian motion, I showed them a short animation produced by Minute Physics, “Albert Einstein: The Size and Existence of Atoms”. Watching the video certainly helped them to improve their understanding of the concept. This, in itself, wasn’t new to me; after all this was just the latest incarnation of an animation used to show the underlying microstructure that explained the concept. In effect, this is what Einstein, and others before him, were able to imagine when they saw the movement of the tiny particles of pollen or smoke dancing under the microscope.

Pupils as makers

However, I also thought it would be interesting to get my pupils to create an animation to explain the concept. I have tried a variety of ways to create pupil animations, but I think that making stop-motion animations is the best. Although it is a lengthy and painstaking process, pupils really enjoy the tactile experience of moving around particles on the desk to represent the molecules in a gas, and I think it helps them to internalise and really understand the intricacies of the model.

Feedback from students has been excellent; it is clear that they enjoy the lesson, and like working creatively in science lessons. But I was most convinced that this was a worthwhile project when I started to observe some quite spontaneous but really sophisticated peer-review taking place. Pupils were watching each other’s animations as they were being built, and noticing the scientific inaccuracies in the models, as well as praising them for their work.

Recently, I tried a similar exercise with an upper sixth class; this time considering the workings of the internal combustion engine. Again, the results were impressive, as you can see from the short film below.

Reflections on a flipped lesson

I am no authority on ‘flipped lesson’, but I wanted to share my first real experience trying out a completely ‘flipped lesson’with a year 10 class. In case you didn’t know, the premise is that in a traditional (maths) classroom, the teacher delivers a lecture to the class, and then for homework they attempt practice questions. In the ‘flipped lesson’, they watch the video lecture for homework, and then attempt practice questions in class, thus giving them more time to ask their questions teachers for help and support.

So, I started by creating a short video lecture on electrical power, the use of fuses, and energy transferred. In their previous lesson, I set the class a homework to watch the video and make notes, pausing it when they needed, and rewinding if necessary. Here is the video lecture they watched:

Click here for a post showing how I made this video lesson.

The lesson consisted of three activities; pupils had to choose which to tackle, and in which order they should approach them. I also told them that I expected everyone to have completed at least two tasks, but that some of them should complete all three. In order to participate, they first had to show evidence that they had made the notes from the video. (One pupil hadn’t done the homework, and so he went off to the computer room to watch the video and make notes first).

I had written on the board:

1. Practical task. This is designed to help your conceptual understanding.
2. Calculation practice. This is designed to help you apply the mathematical formulae.
3. Problem solving task. This will allow you to work creatively. It is probably best for an extension task.

The idea was to give the class responsibility for their own learning; they choose what task to do after having thought about the reason they were going to do it. Most pupils enjoy practical work in science, and the majority did indeed start with the practical task, but a couple opted to do the calculations first. What was interesting was that they were all able to explain to me why they had chosen their particular activity first; they had definitely engaged with the pedagogical reasoning behind the lesson.

The group worked with a real sense of purpose and engagement. What was particularly noticeable was the relatively seamless way they moved from one activity to the next; they didn’t require a motivational speech once in the one hour lesson, as groups often do when you change the activity at the same time for all pupils.

At the end of the lesson, I asked them to complete a short survey, and to offer any other thoughts. I’ve summarised the class responses graphically below:

 

Figure 1: Post flipped-lesson questionnaire results

The results of this short questionnaire are extremely positive, and show that my pupils appreciated the style and way of working. There are a number in the class who are dyslexic, and find it difficult copying from the board; it was encouraging that one of those pupils commented:

“It is helpful because we have to think about the notes for ourselves from the video rather than just copying down words and diagrams from the board.”

This seemed strange to me at first, because I didn’t think that there was a huge difference between the way I would do this in a lesson. Yet somehow the task seems to have been more engaging for this pupil. Another dyslexic pupil commented:

“I find it easier to write the notes because you are reading what I need to write down.”

I also read aloud what I am writing in class, but because in the flipped lesson he could pause the video, the result is that I was reading at the pace at which he was writing, so the note taking instantly became easier for him. The only negative comment was that:

“I enjoyed it, but sometimes when you can’t ask questions it can be annoying.”

However, it was interesting that this particular pupil agreed that he had more time to ask his teacher for help and support during the lesson. Next time I set a flipped lesson, I will also ask them to write down a list of questions as they come across them. Sometimes you can forget what you were going to ask when you have the opportunity to do so later. Another pupil commented:

“It is efficient because you can revise in your own time and it has more information.”

I’m particularly keen on this point; flipped lessons as a revision aid allow pupils to work at their own pace, and in their own time. My YouTube channel contains a large number of revision videos designed to help pupils to revise by watching a flipped lesson. It is a shame that, for the vast majority, as my channel’s viewing stats show, they revise the day before the exam itself!

Figure 2: Most people revise the day before the exam.

Retrospectively, I should have asked questions that were less leading; for example the first question could have been phrased “Do you think that making notes for homework instead of doing practice questions is a [much better], [better], [no different], [worse], [much worse] way of working”. In my defence I can say that for simplicity’s sake, I wanted the answers to be the same for each question; but perhaps I have led them to believe that the outcome I was looking for was true. Or perhaps it shows that my pupils have been persuaded by me that the flipped lesson has educational merit. Either way, their behaviour and motivation during the lesson itself has certainly shown me that there is a lot to be gained from this approach. It certainly takes time to set up in advance, but I think that time is a worthwhile investment.