Some the of the phrases we can use as Teachers to encourage creative thinking are:
Imagine if …..?
Why not ………?
What would you do if ………?
What can we do?
There are some great tools out there to spark creativity in students. One of these is:
School Retool http://schoolretool.org/
Share your ideas and resources here including any valuable links to resources.
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Imagine if funds spent on admin and designing new forms for teachers to fill out was spent on Laboratory Equipment.
What would you do if we had the funds?
We could do?
We could design simulated workplaces. The students could practice and play with equipment in a way they could never do in the real workplace. they could develop confidence and skills.
With the onset of COVID-19. we had to start teaching online using MS team. We had a lot to learn very quickly. The units I teach Aseptic Tech, Introductory Microbiology & Immunology are all very hands on practical skills. The students need to develop the skills to be ready for the workplace. We had to modify our lectures, use online film clips and design worksheets to analysis and interpret data they would usually collected in a practical session. There was no other choice than to return to the laboratories and run COVID safe practical workshops. There was a lot of… Read more »
Embracing open innovation and collaboration for creativity as a way of learning
Using MS teams,Kahoot and Whiteboard features have assisted remote learning and helped students engage creatively even when far.
MICROSOFT SWAY/ Forms. Other fun learning tools include Padlet, Mentimeter, kahoot Big School
Start off by making the students feel safe and help them understand it won’t always work right away, assuming there is time and scope in what you are learning to undertake these activities.
Canva is a good tool for students to digitally create art, posters, mindmaps, etc. that is reasonably easy to learn and has a lot of free features.
I agree psychological safety is the entry to creative thinking
Making the students feel safe to try and to make mistake. We can often learn a lot from making a mistake. In my Pathology field of study an error is not a problem. In the workplace being to scared to admit an error can be deadly.
In TAFE always good to find out student skill sets and then give them the opportunity to participate and contextualise to class materials. Quite often leads to better group cohesion and engagement
Thanks for the tip!
great advice Thank you
Some students can struggle to develop the skills required. It is a great joy of teaching when one of the students that has struggled clicks and masters the problem skill.
Many of our skills can be contextualised to the Pathology Labs the students hope to work in.
We were only discussing ‘risk’ (in a ECEC playground), at our staff meeting yesterday…..one of my concerns was…..’does someone have my back, if something goes wrong?’…..trust in your team is a huge contributor to ‘taking risks’. Unfortunately, our past experiences do influence how we look at risk, learning new skills, or even reaching out for help when we need it!!
Several ways of practising on making students independent in their way of learning without always relying on classroom/teacher culture make them creative. In the process of creativity, they can answer their own questions of Why not? What can I do? and so on.
Padlet, Mentimeter and kahoot fun ways to engage students for online learning and in the classroom
Agree,they are great collaborative tools for the classroom.
Mentimeter, Padlet and Kahoot are great ways to engage students.
Kahoot and Whiteboard features have assisted digital remote learning
Covid 19 certainly has introduced new platforms to teach and learn from i.e MS teams, Moodle, zoom, skype etc. Most students have embraced this quite well. Only 3 years ago I was still having to hand out paper copies of many assessments and UAGS etc as students weren’t tech savvy or had internet access.
I agree Nicole, everything is online now and students are often preferring it – the younger generation anyway, some struggles for the other generation but improvable with assistance.
With students from different industries its easy to discuss a particular problem as various industries have experienced similar problems and have had different ways ,means, and tooling to deal with them.
What can we do has become a popular question to encourage creativity in the last 18 months with COVID and lockdowns. The situation we have found ourselves in reminds us that we have a growth mindset, that we are adaptable and we can achieve anything. We now need to apply these adaptive skills to our ‘normal’ everyday routines and question ourselves to do things differently.
Necessity is the mother of invention, we have been forced to be creative in our approaches in response to COVID, with great results. I think if we can apply this same creativity and adaptability to our ‘normal’ teaching we will surprise ourselves with what we are capable of. However I do think that our students have been the driving force behind this success, they have handled everything that we have thrown at them so well, I think this has in some ways forced us to be and do better. My students have taught me so much, particularly in terms of… Read more »
Covid made us think differently about what we did
Yes the pandemic has got all the world thinking creatively and achieve success in learning outcomes regardless.
Having time to be creative and have creative discussions is vital. When we are rushing from one task to the next, there’s no time for innovation – until it’s forced on us like during Covid. A small silver lining to a pandemic 🙂
Exactly right Casey. The culture of passing from one task to next continuously kills the creativity,
I agree Casey. Would we have chosen to change our ways if given a choice? But, because we ‘just had to’, we did it, & learned so much in the process!!
when listening to this I also thought about times when I have been burnt from those around me and how that makes me react. It then starts me thinking about the amount of trust I have in those who burnt me before. It would be so good not to have those feelings to have a place where you felt same and happy to invest in identifying ways to do things differently.
Very understandable. And also creating safe space for yourself and choosing your reactions.
Imagine if …..? Why not ………? What would you do if ………? What can we do? Teaching in 2020/2021 has been possible by embracing each of these questions . We all have had to be innovative within our teaching practice , work around tech issues ,ensure inclusiveness for all our learners , find news ways of delivery , think outside the box. For myself it was about learning to teach a trade in an imperfect setting which resulted in more of a collaborative learning process for all . Time consuming and exhausting ,however I am a better teacher for the… Read more »
Covid 19 has given us the opportunities to try something different as in this case it was not what would we do with out the classroom. The classroom was not there. How much of what we have learnt over the past two years will stay with us
Very good points, Fiona. There’s nothing like a crisis to bring out innovation!
I always encourage students to incorporate some small aspect of them into whatever they do, for example in a baking class, what flavours are relevant to them (cultural, familiar etc) recently a student of Vietnamese background, created a “Banh mi pastry”
I love this idea of allowing them to take control of their own learning in any way that we can.
Yes, Tayce, You are right. We should do our best to make our students to take control of their own learning instead of relying on teachers without thinking.
Exactly students from various backgrounds and workplaces have a lot to share and expose to one another.
That’s a great idea, it helps connect them to an initially difficult process. Thank you 🙂
I use it often in class, how can we get where we want and need.
Especially with students with a disability, the how and what can is important.
As many have already said 2020-21 has given us a great opportunity to experiment with: 1. Why not…..? 2. What if…….? 3. What can I do? In the ESOL world that I am working in, the organisation threw a lot of time and resources into conducting training into alternate/mix mode delivery and as educators we were all able to adapt quickly to the change. The challenge was that the students didn’t have the same technology available to them, the skills to needed to access the ‘delivery platforms’ or the English to navigate it all. Through trial and error, we did… Read more »
Some great ideas. Unfortunately creativity is stifled by training package requirements and compliance in VET
agreed, and as always the governing body is the slowest to adapt.
I agree. Students and teachers are overloaded with the amount of work to do/complete that creativity is sometimes suppressed.
Could not agree more
Hard going for all!
Covid during 2020 and 2021 has definately been an eye opener as to what can be achieved and how much “thinking outside the box” has become the norm when facilitating the online classroom.
I agree, Melissa. So much innovation in such a short time – it’s amazing what can be achieved when we are forced into areas out of our comfort zones.
I agree, it has forced us to use technology more effectively and encouraged us to be creative in the delivery of content. We now need to transfer these ideas and skills to our everyday practice.
Some great ideas and starting points though the what can we do gets us due to funding constraints … and the powers that be seem to think that all our students want to learn online (that’s why they come to campus rather than enrol through Digital ???)
Asking the question and having the ideas ready for if we do have some excess to utilise is always good though
Financial constraints are always a challenge but so is the use of technology for a number of our students. The digital world has bought about a number of changes in the work force and now we are trying to move those who do not always have that knowledge along in this world as well
Using technology (e.g. QR codes for student to access information or fill out work using their phones instead or pen and paper)
I think we answered all of the Imagine if
why not?
what would you do?
what can we do?
when we all were in lockdown nothing is impossible. Just needed a reason
Fly by the seat of our pants first time and hopefully we have it right this time in lockdown .. a bit better prepared as we are now asking the question
100% been a very scary time but also a time of great learning
I totally agree, I think the silver lining of it all is that it has forced us to change and adapt our practises to suit the world we are living in.
I totally agree! My confidence in using technology & different platforms has grown so much & I can see so much potential for the future…..I just need to allow myself the time to be creative, be brave enough to speak up & start taking risks!!
Imagine if …..?
Why not ………?
What would you do if ………?
What can we do?
In 2020 we got to experience all of this first hand moving very quickly to new platforms and using new resources and we haven’t looked back .
I totally agree!
Online teaching during Covid 19 raised all those questions for the teachers and for students.
Yes and a very quick learning curve!
super steep learning curve and learn as you go
Moodle is a new tool we use – new way of not wasting paper – learning from home as well
I agree with you Jackie Moodle is great students can get all the
resources they need to prepare for their class No Paper
What we are moving onto – A great Online Tool.
not quite user friendly though.
agree. i prefer hard copies. but younger generations seem fine with softcopies.
Unfortunately-our Moodles have gone to a statewide model which makes it really difficult to contextualise materials for local cohorts. In theory-great to have full materials on-line for ‘learn when you can’
What would we do it…….? What can we do……? This happened when COVID hit, Personally I had to learn very quickly how to deliver classes on line. Not being particularly tech savvy I had no choice but to become so. Look at what we had to offer and learn how to do. Fast. Encourage and teach students to do the same.
There were both positive as well as some issues with COVID-19 in education. It definitely motivated some educators to bring about a major change in the way they delivered content, but the students who are from non English speaking backgrounds found it extremely difficult to engage even though the organisation had a variety of resources that were provided for the students. Using the above phrases would have been a great resource to encourage creative thinking with both students & teachers:
Imagine if …..?
Why not ………?
What would you do if ………?
What can we do?
I was one of those educators that was motivated to bring about major chance to how I delivered my classes. I had no choice but to learn very quickly how to do that. Honestly one of the best things that happened to me.
I agree ,when pushed out of our comfort zone we realised anything is possible.
It certainly pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to approach and think about things differently. It also allowed me to question – what was really important to teach and what skills did I need to encourage my students to learn, practice and hone
What would you do if…….? Diff would create good discussions.
COVID certainly disrupted some sacred cows especially in the form of hands-on practical assessment. Much of these were “virtualised” or simulated with a large degree of success and will hopefully be further developed moving forward.
Unfortunately we weren’t able to our practical component being the beauty industry. We were however able to deliver all theory online. Something not done before but definitely a way of the future. We also continue to communicate with students using MS Teams. It’s great.
I prefer Shat would you do if …? and What can we do? questions. That put educators in the position of taking responsibility for helping out rather than evading for good excuses.
Due to covid, we learnt quickly the news ways of delivering on line. With covid lock down returning during the school holidays now we will need to remember how it was all done…..
At least we have the holidays to brush up on all of this again
Everyone took the responsibility for coping. It was so efficient and co-operative.
yes and individual efforts to overcome the barriers were welcomed
A similar experience was evident among my colleagues it also gave us the opportunity to see how clever & creative some of our colleagues were, got to see and find a lot about other teachers & their amazing skills.
it was amazing what we learnt differently when we had no choice
Yes but online is only one aspect of learning it is not the answer to everything most students wish to interact with each other as soon as possible.
yes the facetoface physical connection is essential to all/most people.
When we want to make changes, you need the community involvement for the change to take place and stick. If it is there decision and there is ownership to making change happen. No idea is silly or unworthy. You will apply
Imagine if …..?
Why not ………?
What would you do if ………?
What can we do?
Believe in it and have a go. It may not work but at least you have tried. Then try another approach.
this is a good idea i will try this next week Ritula
Yes, just give it a go. Before this training, I was trying to avoid asking question Imagine if …..? because it looked silly to me.
I am surely going to use these questioning strategies during our staff meetings.
Yes community involvement is vital
thanks to covid MS Teams, Kahoot, menti meter, padlet and even facebook!
Couple of years ago my year 12 students taught me Kahoot, Teams is great! During teaching with Technology workshops, we learnt many ways of engage students. Just need the time to practise and get better at it.
it is amazing how we have had to learn all these online platforms like; teams, and zoom RTO manager etc and how Instagram etc have taken off
Couldnt agree with you more Karalyn!
changes were forced upon us and we embraced new methods for engagement and teaching purposes – but, unfortunately, the assessment remained the same for compliance
yes many of us had to learn how to use these – they do not work well for practical such as trades
I agree Jackie. There is only so much you can do through these resources for nursing courses.
I would like to try some online delivery with Kahoot or Zoom as nearly every student owns a mobile phone. and these are more user friendly. thats what I Can do
Why not try Teams in a face to face classroom with a shared whiteboard that they can use to collaborate with.
I like that idea, many ways of collaborating with documents, gives lots of opportunities.
Looking at the four questions, we have created blended classrooms, created video content for students to use outside of class, we put together on online tutorial class and have created blended face to face and online classes
I agree in a short time we have made many changes.
Creativity keeps the learning space interesting and allows students to come up with all sorts of ideas, helps with problems solving, team building, teamwork and collaboration
absolutely – sometimes this can be challenging but thats why i love teaching!
Agree – creativity in the classroom and during class discussions allows the student to expand on their thinking, ask questions they may not have previously asked as well as building self confidence.
Totally agree KLee, creativity is the key!
totally agree with you Kate
Our way to help learning throughout the covid pandemic was to move our classes to online to try the continuation of learning
Mark – as much as Covid has been a curse, it has also been a blessing in creating new ways to deliver
COVID was a great way for everyone to gain new skills that can be valuable to take into future employment, not just the classroom. Our students and teachers gained from the experience.
the best thing to come out of covid – yes it was full on! but we did it and now have some many new skills!
I foster peer-to-peer learning in my classrooms. I encourage students who are at different levels to work together at different times as this assists both sides to benefit, as the proficient student reinforces what they know and the student who is trying to learn or catch up has a personal coach. Every student has something to teach: they could be tech savvy; up-to-date with the latest information on certain topics; have a great sense of humour etc.
Great idea Suzanne but can be problematic if one student has language difficulty and not keen to work with other student
I like that idea of peer to peer learning – and we learn more when we teach
Suzanne, in my ESOL classes I pair up students from different First languages to complete a task together. This way both of them try. and it works. Some times students at different proficiency levels are paired together to complete a task
Study buddies and also those who have done something before to assist the novice works well. Getting younger ones who are tech savvy to help older ones is fun too.
Great resource that needs exploring and thinking about
Being creative during Covid and delivering classes online to adults has been challenging but pushing the students to engage with the learning activities using things like Whiteboard, Padlet, Forms embedding Youtubes into factsheets and other bits of tech has been a great mindwidening experience for all of us. Adding more of the ‘image if, why not etc’ will add a whole new dimension. I can’t wait to try it!
Agreed, this will be an interesting experiment
Jan, not only students but as teachers we had to adapt to the new modes of delivery during Covid 19 lockdowns
With Covid, we had to move our classes to online learning. This was especially difficult for students with low levels of English who didn’t have the technological ability to navigate the systems, or the internet at home or even a computer. We had to ask ourselves “what can we do”, and we were able to engage those who either did have the know how or the physical equipment to do classes on line, and for those who couldn’t, we replicated the lessons in paper form and posted packages to the students. We also asked students how they would like to… Read more »
I prefer hard copies to online versions personally. I spend up to 16+ hours per day with a computer screen and given the opportunity to read a paper based document is like heaven. Hard copy documents can be taken anywhere, and read over and over and no access to the internet is required. There are many benefits that will be lost when hard copies are not around any more.
What if students could listen to their English texts read by a current “star” in the era of the students? That way the students could connect with the reader and then hear their book – great for students who struggle to read.
yes it would
Really good idea, we use that and encourage students to listen to the content in immersive reader
Creativity in re-designing the classroom can result in ‘for and against decisions’ which can be a good learning tool and the need to accept choices which aren’t always plausible and wont work in this situation.
And allowing the students and opportunity to participate in creating their learning space is valuable too.
Totally agree – such a great idea!
Why not remove all the desks in the classroom and ask students to re-design the room? It energises creativity with lots of discussion.