From public speaking to fostering creativity in students, explore insights on engagement, skill mastery, and the value of diverse interests in learning.
"Engaging in varied interests over time promotes a cross-pollination of ideas that lead to divergent thinking—a key ingredient of creativity." This has also been my experience as a enthusiastic generalist in a hyper-specialised world (and high school teacher with creative courses).
I liked your list. I might also add 'applying strategic constraints'. I find that if you block the most-common approach to addressing an assignment then you can force creativity.
For example, if the task is to write a paragraph about creativity, but students must begin by writing the last sentence, working backwards until they conclude with the opening sentence, you may get very different outputs. These kinds of constraints can be used to create obstacles which force students to 'take the road less travelled'.
I totally agree. Time and resource constraints work well too. In my entrepreneurship class, I’ll often ask my students, “What’s a version of your business idea that you could build tomorrow?”
1. I loved your response about fostering creativity. Hooray for putting in more thought than required!
2. At first, I thought: “wow, what a great use for AI!” And I think for something like pens, it is. But I wonder if in a different context, outsourcing that synthesization might allow the ability to even do so to atrophy. I don’t think people—especially students—will have the discipline to discern the difference between when they should and shouldn’t do it themselves.
But then again, I’m struggling to come up with a specific example, so maybe synthesizing large groups of information is best left to the robots and I’m just a nervous naysayer.
Re: 2: you’re definitely right to be concerned. In my limited trials allowing students to use AI for specific assignments, I’ve noticed many students skip the step of trying to understand the result. For example: a game design student tried to add a jump feature to a movement script for a character in his game with ChatGPT. The script worked just fine, but not without dialing in its variables (specially ground check raycast distancing). Fortunately this offered a a good “teachable moment” that AI can’t replace the human thinking involved in a creative, albeit technical, project.
Great example. Man, I don’t envy you and other teachers. The coming years feel like such a challenge! But I’m grateful for the teachers stepping up to the challenge.
Thanks for the mention!
"Engaging in varied interests over time promotes a cross-pollination of ideas that lead to divergent thinking—a key ingredient of creativity." This has also been my experience as a enthusiastic generalist in a hyper-specialised world (and high school teacher with creative courses).
I liked your list. I might also add 'applying strategic constraints'. I find that if you block the most-common approach to addressing an assignment then you can force creativity.
For example, if the task is to write a paragraph about creativity, but students must begin by writing the last sentence, working backwards until they conclude with the opening sentence, you may get very different outputs. These kinds of constraints can be used to create obstacles which force students to 'take the road less travelled'.
I totally agree. Time and resource constraints work well too. In my entrepreneurship class, I’ll often ask my students, “What’s a version of your business idea that you could build tomorrow?”
1. I loved your response about fostering creativity. Hooray for putting in more thought than required!
2. At first, I thought: “wow, what a great use for AI!” And I think for something like pens, it is. But I wonder if in a different context, outsourcing that synthesization might allow the ability to even do so to atrophy. I don’t think people—especially students—will have the discipline to discern the difference between when they should and shouldn’t do it themselves.
But then again, I’m struggling to come up with a specific example, so maybe synthesizing large groups of information is best left to the robots and I’m just a nervous naysayer.
Re: 2: you’re definitely right to be concerned. In my limited trials allowing students to use AI for specific assignments, I’ve noticed many students skip the step of trying to understand the result. For example: a game design student tried to add a jump feature to a movement script for a character in his game with ChatGPT. The script worked just fine, but not without dialing in its variables (specially ground check raycast distancing). Fortunately this offered a a good “teachable moment” that AI can’t replace the human thinking involved in a creative, albeit technical, project.
Great example. Man, I don’t envy you and other teachers. The coming years feel like such a challenge! But I’m grateful for the teachers stepping up to the challenge.
Love the pen summary! Enjoy your easy-to-read writing style too.