Nurturing Student Creativity with Video Projects

The David B. Weigle Information Commons at the Penn Libraries announces
the release of Nurturing Student Creativity with Video Projects, a set
of six digital case stories about University of Pennsylvania faculty and
students, created as part of the national MERLOT ELIXR project. MERLOT
ELIXR supports a digital repository of real-life stories showcasing
successful and innovative teaching strategies and the process of
implementing them. These digital case stories can be used freely in
faculty development programs and also accessed by individual instructors.

Nurturing Student Creativity with Video Projects is online at
http://wic.library.upenn.edu/elixr.html

Funding for this project has been provided by the Fund for Improvement
of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) through the MERLOT ELIXR national
initiative, managed by the California State University’s Center for
Distributed Learning. More than 30 higher education institutions in 10
states have participated in creating digital case stories online at
http://elixr.merlot.org/

Penn’s creation features five faculty who have integrated video project
assignments into the courses they teach. Faculty and students discuss
the assignment details, how the assignment was structured and assessed
and the process by which video creation fit into the pedagogical goals
for the course. The five faculty contributors are: Regina Austin (Penn
Law), Peter Decherney (English and Cinema Studies), Louise Krasniewicz
(Anthropology), Andrew Lamas (Urban Studies) and Jacqui Sadashige
(Center for Programs in Critical Writing).

ReCreating America submitted by Susan Keller-Mathers (correspondence sent to her)

Hello,

I’m one of the producers of a documentary for public television about efforts to nurture creativity in education called: “ReCreating America: Creativity and Learning”.  It focuses on four innovative programs in Oklahoma schools that aim to nurture students’ creativity from pre-school through high school.  The film is being distributed through NETA (The National Educational Telecommunications Associations) and will be airing this spring and summer on public television stations nationwide.  We thought it might be of interest to your faculty and students.

For more information and press materials, please visit our website:
http://www.stateofcreativity.com/Recreating-America

ReCreating America

The first in a series of documentaries on creativity in America.
Produced by InCA Productions for OETA and national Public Television.

View the film at OETA On Demand.

Download the press kit here.

For much of its history, the word “America” has stood for the brightest ideas, the most resourceful solutions and the most provocative insights. Is this still true today? Americans are waking up to a newly globalized world, where they no longer have special rights to great creative “aha”s.

Today, the best ideas in software, technology, management, manufacturing, lifestyle, education or music are just as likely to be coming from Bangalore, Shanghai, Osaka, Dublin or Helsinki as they are from Chicago or San Jose. And what of tomorrow? To maintain their originality and competitiveness in the future, what will Americans have to do, to re-think, re-engineer and re-create their priorities?

The First Film: Creativity and Learning

The first film of ReCreating America explores the importance of creativity in education: how can parents and teachers assist the creative growth of children, and what do they often do to stifle it? “When we’re six or seven years old,” Picasso once said in old age, “We’re all artists. It’s what happens in school and at home that determines who remains an artist.”

The film takes the State of Oklahoma as a test-bed, and visits four schools (across the age range) to assess the ways in which they are attempting to teach and promote creativity:

1. The Educare Preschool in Tulsa, OK: a low-income, at-risk community
2. The “A+ Schools” initiative at Flower Mound elementary school, Lawton, OK
3. The “Odyssey of the Mind” competition, as taught in Middle School at Piedmont, OK
4. The Santa Fe South Charter High School in Oklahoma, OK: desperate measures?

The program asks teachers, parents and national experts: what appear to be the most effective ways to promote creativity, while still teaching the three Rs, and even improving test scores?

InCA Productions

Independent Communications Associates, better known globally as InCA, is an award-winning television production company with offices in San Francisco, Toulouse (France) and Nairobi (Kenya). For 25 years, productions by InCA and its co-founder and president, David Kennard have won numerous awards, including national and international Emmies, the International Science Film Festival Jury Prize, the Peabody and Dupont Columbia awards, and the National Educational Media Network Trophy. From The Ascent of Man to Cosmos and Connections, from The Heart of Healing to The Promise of Play, each project has been a milestone in its field.

ReCreating America Production Team

• Senior Producer and Narrator: David Kennard
• Producer and Director of Research: Elizabeth Kennard
• Director and Editor: Michael O’Connell

Contact:

David Kennard, InCA Productions · 415 389 5000 · dkennard@inca-productions.com
NETA program offer page:
http://www.netaonline.org/search/ProgramDetails.cfm?ID=3001

InCA Productions
http://www.incafilms.com/

Best Regards,

Michael O’Connell
Producer
InCA Productions
917-698-9016

Lecture Capture: A Guide to Effective Use

Lecture capture is an exciting technology that is drawing the attention of instructors and students on college campuses across the country. A number of faculty members at the University of Michigan (U-M) are already capturing lectures and creating podcasts and screencasts as additional learning resources for students. Other institutions, including Duke,1 Stanford,2 UC Berkeley,3 and University of Wisconsin-Madison,4 are also experimenting with offering podcasts to students to provide supplementary learning material, to free up class time for active learning experiences, or to make learning material accessible to the general public.

See the full article at Tomorrow’s Professor eMAIL Newsletter Msg #1042

Closing Plenary Keynote at Creative Teaching and Learning Conference in Higher Education in Toronto

Dr. Susan Keller-Mathers recently had the pleasure of both attending the Canadian Society for Teaching and Learning in High Education (STLHE) conference “Creative Teaching and Learning: Exploring. Shaping. Knowing”  in Toronto and presenting the closing keynote “Potential for Creative Learning and Teaching”  (video of keynote: https://ryecast.ryerson.ca/21/watch/596.aspx).

It was wonderful to reconnect with our long time Canadian colleague and ICSC alumni Gretchen Bingham as well as having the opportunity to engage with a community of scholars who teach in all disciplines across the academy.  She had many rich conversations regarding what Alex Osborn considered central to the growth of the field of creativity  “bring a more creative trend to education” and attended many very good sessions where she was engaged and challenged to continue to think about the ways we engage in the higher education classroom (see opening keynote video for example: https://ryecast.ryerson.ca/21/watch/597.aspx )

As a result, Dr. Keller-Mathers also had the opportunity to submit an article for publication in the Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching (CELT) titled “Building Passion and Potential for Creative Learning in Higher Education”.  Here’s the abstract:

“Building passion and potential for creative learning in higher education involves deliberately seeking to understand, appreciate and teach for creativity. The recognition of the urgent need for creativity and problem solving skills, the understanding that you must embrace creative learning for yourself first and that creativity cannot be left to chance is central. Developments in the field of creativity, both with regard to defining aspects of creativity and providing frameworks for integrating creative learning into higher education practices are discussed”

The Collected Essays will be published in time for the next year’s conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan. Prior CELT collected essays can be downloaded at: http://www.stlhe.ca/en/publications/celt.php

Check out other blogs at http://facultyicsc.blogspot.com/

Fun Creative Video

Contributed by: Jennifer Porritt

Thought this was great and really was a simple, yet creative way to change behaviour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

Not exactly “teaching” related, but I loved it as an example.

Current Issues in Creativity Research

This blog discusses the current issues in creativity by the graduate students at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State.

http://creativityresearch.blogspot.com/

The Creative Problem Solving Workbook

Contributed by: Kathysue Dorey Pohrte

The Creative Problem Solving Workbook

Some general instructions and guidelines for completing this Creative Problem Solving Worksheet.

The Creative Problem Solving Workbook is no easy task to complete

Some general instructions and guidelines to help with completing the Creative Problem Solving Workbook.

Tell us how we did

Now that you have had a week to ponder about your creativity, we’d like to hear your feedback about the conference! Please take a moment and complete the online evaluation at www.wlu.ca/teachingday/evaluation

We look forward to hearing from you.

This is where it begins…

The countdown to the 2010 Teaching Day Conference at Wilfrid Laurier University is on! We are 21 days away to “Building Creative Capacity in Ourselves and Our Students”. What better way to encourage our creativity than to create a blog in which we get to share ideas and resources interactively!

Are you Laurier faculty or teaching staff and interested in attending our conference? Please visit www.wlu.ca/edev/teachingday for more information and to register.