The Creativity Problem

20 years ago, I would not have imagined the challenges that face education today. Teachers are viewed as non-experts. Powerful groups make decisions about student learning and financially benefit from these new directions. What is most upsetting is the way students are being forced into route learning and fanatically tested.

The wide-spread mania of standardized testing has minimized opportunities for students to develop creative thinking skills in schools. This has been reported by 81% of elementary teachers, 62% of middle school teachers, and 54% of high school teachers. A narrowing curriculum has minimized instruction that would have otherwise developed creative thinking in students. And yet, 85% of college-educated, employed people report creative thinking as a critical asset for their careers. 99% of school superintendents and 97% of employers view creativity as important in the workplace.

This is a huge disconnect! Socially, we want creative outcomes but nothing we ACTUALLY do in education is moving that way.

As an art educator, one strength of our field lies in fostering creative thinking through learning activities that we determine. Importantly, these learning activities based on our students and their context. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues are being evaluated according to their school’s reading and math scores. According to the Kennedy Center, the percentage of these scores on art educator evaluation runs from 10% to 90%. This is beyond unfair – it is absurd – and needs to be contested.

Some talented educators and I have been considering this problem and how to combat it. We are all practicing educators and realize we cannot adequately advocate from the classroom. We also felt that such advocacy efforts should:

1. Demonstrate the value of authentic creative learning in schools in a way that administrators and legislators can value
2. Empower teacher expertise in judging student learning, and
3. NOT standardize teaching practices.

The rateCreative Solution

Last fall, we developed rateCreative as a means to do this. rateCreative offers a means to revalue creative thinking in schools. Our online tools statistically validate creative thinking skills by compiling the expert judgments of teachers.

As an art teacher, I wanted our first audience will be my colleagues, all of whom have been hit the hardest over the last decade.

Although the site has not launched yet, we have put together an introduction for your review and knowledge. Education is big business, but our feeling is that learning and community trump all. As a result, we will need the help and support of art educators in getting the site launched. Our intention is to make it a free resource for educators.

Here’s 4 ways that you can help:

1. Watch our introduction video

2. Like us on Facebook to get updates on our launch

3. If you like what you see, SHARE with others!

4. You can follow us on twitter @ratecreative

If you have any direct questions, please contact us through our website .

We look forward to advancing art education, teacher expertise, and creativity in schools with you!

Chris Grodoski is a Middle School art teacher at Franklin Middle School in Wheaton, IL and has received several awards including the Illinois Art Education Association Middle Level Art Educator of the Year in 2012 and the NAEA Middle Level Art Educator of the Year 2013. 

Are you looking for an integrated art project that covers all areas of 21st century learning? Shadow puppetry can combine the core subjects of English, Reading, and Language Arts with the Arts. All 4Cs considered to be essential skills for success in today’s world can be incorporated in a shadow puppetry program: critical thinking /problem solving, communication, collaboration and creativity/innovation. Life and Career Skills that can be taught through puppetry include: adapting to change, be flexible, manage goals and time, work independently, be self-directed learners, interact effectively with others, work effectively in diverse teams, manage projects, produce results, and be responsible to others.

Shadow puppet theater offers a wide range of educational potentials. Puppetry can be used effectively as curriculum based class projects to teach historical events, stories, world cultures (multicultural) and more. Using one’s imagination is an important part of the educational process. Puppetry breaks down barriers, invites participation, and leaves students with a long remembered educational experience. It lends itself to rich integration: writing, literature, design, craft, acting, drama, art, music, dance, movement, technology, school themes and more. Puppetry is easy to do. It can be done economically. There is quite a bit of research on the values of puppetry. Based on many reports what was found was that: drama improved reading readiness, reading achievement scores, oral language skills, story understanding, development of independent thinking, problem solving, collaboration skills, putting creative ideas into action and more.

Shadow puppet theater meets all nine standards of what qualifies as a “Best Practice” defined by the CT State Department of Education: A clear and common focus; high standards and expectations;strong leadership; supportive, personalized and relevant learning; parent/community involvement; monitoring, accountability, and assessment; curriculum and instruction; professional development; and, time and structure. Shadow Puppet Theater also fulfills National Standards for Visual Arts. All six content standards can be included.

Our school has a yearly theme that, whenever possible, is integrated into curriculum. The school theme for the 2012-2013 school year, beginning in the summer academic/enrichment program is “origins”. I decided to implement shadow puppet theater for the visual arts class. I became very interested in this, after attending a workshop at the NAEA Conference in 2012. Shadow puppetry originated in China. Therefore, I chose the Chinese story The Four Dragons by Tom Daning.

The first week of class (approximately four hours) included an introduction of shadow puppets and theater. Students watched 5-10 minutes of the Tangshan Shadow Puppet Theater on the Smart Board. Next, the story was read and the pages were shown to the students. A list of characters was already in place and students were randomly chosen for roles. They were shown how to draw outlines of the figures and were given assistance as needed. Once these sketches were completed on drawing paper, they were sketched over onto oaktag. The shapes were carefully cut out. Next,the movable parts, such as, arms and legs were drawn and cut out. These were joined by using hole punchers and paper fasteners. We also used thick yarn craft hair, doilies and pieces of colored cellophane. Skewers were used for the rods and attached to the puppets with craft straws and tape.

The second week of class the puppets were completed. A script was written from the story and narration parts were written on cards. Special effects were being researched, developed and tested. Students learned how to move their puppets. They were beginning to learn their narration parts, the story, and the performance. EVERY student had made a puppet(s). EVERY student had a narration part(s). I was fortunate to have a high school student assistant who helped tremendously with assisting and organizing the students with the narration. During this time, I was working with special effects. The classroom assistant helped with organization tasks.

By the end of the third week, we were in the recording studio. Our video technician taped and edited the four performances. Music was inserted. Adobe Premiere was the software used. Each student would receive a DVD of their performance.

Our performances were shown at the end of the summer school program at the end of the fourth week. The remainder of class time included a written assessment and two art activities: crayon resist painting and scratch art.

Currently, during our integrated art periods, our five kindergarten classes are working on shadow puppet theater performances. We have selected five different stories that will be taped and shown to our school and parents. These performances will be posted on www.schooltube.com by the end of this school year.

Resources:

Professional Example Video

• Chinese shadow puppetry by UNESCO

Student Example  Shadow Puppet Theater by Rotella Interdistrict Magnet School

• The Four Dragons
• The Making of the Four Dragons
• Activities After Four Dragons Shadow Puppet Theater

Books

• Worlds of Shadow Teaching with Shadow Puppetry by David Wisniewski and Donna Wisniewski Shadow Puppets & Shadow Play by David Currell

Online Resources

• Nappy’s Puppets
• Puppeteers of America
• The Puppetry Home Page

Scripts

• Four Dragons Script 1
• Four Dragons Script 2
• Four Dragons Script 3
• Four Dragons Script 4
• Four Dragons Script 5
• Four Dragons Script 6
• Four Dragons Script 7
• Four Dragons Script 8
• Four Dragons Script 9
  

Production & Puppets Materials Used

• Skewers or dowels
• Paper fasteners
• Masking or scotch tape
• X-acto knife with extra blades
• Black Cardstock/Oaktag
• Scissors
• Craft Straws (to connect dowels to puppet)
• Cellophane
• Doilies
• Craft Hair
• Light Source - Overhead Projector (s) * Bulbs
• Special Effects – various materials depending on effect(s) Refer to the book Worlds of Shadow Teaching with Shadow Puppetry.

So what are the best apps to actively engage your students in meaningful art content and help you organize curricular resources? We included our favorites but want YOU to be the judge where they belong on the list!

Please feel free to interact and rank up or down what apps you set as a priority. View as a list or filter by tags such as painting, organization, collage, etc.

Please leave a comment on how you use it in your art curriculum!

Digital Tools in the Art Curriculum    If you’ve been following The Teaching Palette for a while, you may have already seen a few of the techie resources included in this course.  But what makes the iTunes U format so great is the note-taking capabilities during a video tutorial and the ability to digitally highlight text within the posts (watch video below for overview). This course will show you how to easily create digital lesson plans, organize online content and collaborate with other art educators while equipping you with the tools to become more prepared and resourceful teacher.

Common Core: Literacy in Art Education This fall the art teachers in my district presented at our state art ed conference on how we integrate literacy into our art curriculums.  Following our presentation, I gathered our resources together as a digital handout and as a way to share well beyond the walls of our conference session.  I am so lucky to work with such amazing art educators!

If you’re not familiar with the iTunes U app, watch this quick demo:

I would love to hear what you think!  Anything I can add or do you have any ideas for new iTunes U courses?

The success of this learning experience is dependent on careful attention to detail. But believe me, it is well worth all the effort! Here’s a look into how I organize this great learning experience:

1. Painting assignment: I start by showing my students eight different paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago and briefly share a couple of details about each. (*Note: paintings chosen based on availability of research material appropriate for 5th grade.)  Students then rank their favorite painting based on the one they are most interested in learning about.  (Tip: use a different color paper for each class to stay organized.)  Next, I go through and sort the completed rankings by preference and create research groups of 2, 3 or 4 students.  After lots of shuffling, I have close to equal numbers of students researching each of the eight paintings.  For example, of the eighty students in 5th grade, I had ten students researching eight different artists.

2. Begin research:  Although I have a variety of books on each artist for student reference, most of the research is done online.  Instead of setting the students free to roam the Internet, I have gathered quality and age appropriate multimedia resources into Livebinder for students to access.

The students are asked to work together gathering basic artist information.  Research roles are assigned to engage all the students in the collaborative learning process:  information recorder, word definition researcher, fact checker, and group progress monitor.  Students are encouraged to find and record only useful information – content important for understanding or something others would find interesting to learn.

Keynote slide of Old Guitarist X-Ray

3. Presentation Creation: Since the iPads at my school are shared across grade levels, I have my students use Keynote on a Mac to create their presentation before loading onto an iPad.  (This can also be done using PowerPoint that is easily converted to a Keynote on the iPad).
Essential Keynote requirements:
Each Keynote must include full screen images of the artist and/or artwork not found at the Art Institute of Chicago.  (A great resource for finding images is Wikipaintings.) The presentations must also include accurate information about the artist, the painting featured, and concluding open-ended questions for the audience.  Here are a few finished student examples in Keynote:

Pablo Picasso Keynote
Georges Seurat Keynote
Claude Monet Keynote
Vincent Van Gogh Keynote

4. Museum Preparation: You will need to separate students into new groups for the museum.  For example, a research group of three students learning about Picasso at school will all be split up into three different museum groups.  In the end, each museum chaperoned group will have all researched artists represented . . . one student representing Picasso, one student Monet, O’Keeffe, Cassatt, etc . . .
Next, find out exact room location of paintings and prepare a rotation map for each group.

 5. iPad Preparation:  Upload all student Keynotes to a wiki or Dropbox.  You will need one iPad per museum chaperoned group. In my case, I had 10 iPads (10 groups of 8 students).  Just use iPad to link to your Dropbox or Wiki, then click on each Keynote to load onto iPads. (Tip: Students should save Keynote with all group member names to make it easy to find correct Keynote to upload)

6.  On location! Students rotate throughout museum taking turns presenting at each painting along the map route.  For example, group #3 starts at location #3 and then moves in rotation order.  I usually add in a few fun stops along the way if there are fewer artists studied than museum chaperoned groups (such as the Thorne Miniature Rooms or a St. George and the Dragon activity)

Check out the video overview to see what our experience looked like:

Since the Keynotes were uploaded online, I just had to share the link so the students could download it at home and share with family.  I have even had former students return and tell me that they visited “their painting” over the summer loved feeling so smart as they discussed it.  I can’t wait to do this project again!

Minecraft is a $7 app that I use with a class set of iPads during my media arts class. (There is also a free version, but you can’t save on it.) If you don’t have access to iPads, Minecraft Edu is another option. When I first started using Minecraft, I had no idea what this game was all about or why it was so addicting to my students. What I did know was that I had to capitalize on my kids’ interests while also creating the perfect opportunity for me to do a Flipped Class Project.

 Getting Started:

Since I was new to Minecraft, I asked a few students to lead class demonstrations. We started the project by just letting the students play in the “creative mode.” In “creative mode” the player has unlimited resources to build any three-dimensional form.

Minecraft Project #1: Convert a drawing to a Minecraft

I started off the project with my students creating a grid drawing on Drawcast. They would then re-create that drawing out of Minecraft blocks in the form of a dilation. The students got to experience the world of Minecraft with no worries of losing or messing up – it was all about stretching the limits of their creativity.

Minecraft project #2: Connect architecture with other subject areas

After about three to four days I felt the majority of the students had a firm grasp on the Minecraft material – I was ready to move onto the next part of the project. Inspired by some resources at Minecraft in Education, I connected careers in architecture with other curricular areas.

My 7th graders were studying medieval castles in their social studies class, so I thought it would be an awesome way to collaborate with an interdisciplinary plan. To help my students get started I used a great web site that showcased blue prints of castles. Then, I gave my students five days to build their castle in the Minecraft environment. Other grade levels made architecture connections with colonial homes (8th grade) and Pyramids integrating the study of Ancient Egypt (6th grade).

Minecraft project #3: Play together using virtual structures built by students

In a Flipped tradition, one of my students suggested that we capitalize on the use of the Minecraft server (which allows up to five players to play on the same world at the same time) and do a mock version of the Crusades where we have to invade each other’s home. Everyone loved the idea, including myself – so a tournament started up. Server set-up tips here.

I didn’t want the students to just go crazy playing Minecraft every day; instead I wanted them to reflect upon what they were learning and share their findings within the small group function on Edmodo.

Want to try Minecraft in your art curriculum? Here are a few tips and observations:

I was AMAZED to see the collaboration between students as they started to build their structures. One person would be the main builder, while the others would gather resources. However along with some great teamwork, I also ran into some difficult management issues. In one situation there was a student who just liked to cause trouble in the game by killing their own teammates. In another situation a student would just go off and fight Zombies and Creepers (not to mention other enemies that attack you during Survival Mode of the game).

Did I forget to mention “survival mode”? Unlike “creative mode” mentioned earlier, “survival mode” gives you a health bar and you have to actually mine for resources. For example, If you want to build tools, you need a crafting table – if you want a crafting table, you need wood. You also want to get to a shelter by night time or monsters come out to get you. If you die, you lose all of your resources. After the five days were up, the students would then go into “attack mode”. Basically, the King/Pharaoh/Plantation Owner would host the Minecraft server, and four people from another team would invade and attack. My point system was pretty messed up, as some times they could find each other and fight, some times the King would just hide and others – the monsters or the team mates would kill each other.

When I do this project again, I will make CLEARER guidelines and expectations. Surely there is the chance that somebody could accidentally “hit” their teammate, but I was getting into issues where students were just wasting time. I would encourage teachers to be constantly roaming around and talk to the students. If somebody complains that a partner is killing them, I would send them out for a time out. ANY time that a student is taken away from Minecraft seems to be one of the harshest punishments. When a student is sent out, it hurts the team but I think it shows them that they must all work together at all times in order to succeed.

Overall this was a GREAT project. Students that never played this game soon found out how addicting it was. I had students come into my room to record a tutorial for future players and others that were eager to share their findings with the program. We still have “Make Up / Free Time Thursdays” where the students still like to battle and brag to see who is the best crafter around.

Ultimately, by introducing the Minecraft project into my art curriculum students learned:

• basic programing skills, tools and principles for creating interactive digital art in an engaging environment.
• how to work in a creative collaboration and the consequences when collaboration fails.
• how to take two-dimensional drawings and turn them into three-dimensional digital forms.

Watch additional video footage from this Minecraft project on this YouTube playlist.

When a class has trouble with noise control or remaining on task, a warning is given and the letter T is turned over.  If the problem persists, the R is turned over and the students must work for 5 minutes in silence.  The last letter (I rarely get this far) represents a silent class (basically strike 3).

This visual warning system has really worked well for my classes. What tips do you have for keeping noise volume down and students on task? 

Using this checklist saves me time by avoiding going over something we already covered and puts the responsibility back on the students.  So if a student “forgot” a class procedure all I have to say (with a smile) is . . . “We covered what to do already, please ask a classmate what the procedure is” or “We worked on lining up silently in class last month, but looks like we will need some practice and try lining up again”.

Here is the PDF of my classroom procedures checklist that I use in my classroom.

What procedures do you have in your classroom and how do you keep track?

Here’s how it works:  During my art class in 1st-5th grades, I introduce an art vocabulary term related to a concept we are discussing in class.  Since I already have many of my vocabulary words on my magnetic word wall, I just pull the word off to the side and indicate it is the password of the day.
Then at the end of class I use repetition and whole brain teaching to help my students remember this word.  See how I do this in the video below.

The following week the students are allowed entry into my classroom if they can tell me the password.  While this password isn’t exactly a secret, I do have the students whisper it as they enter my room to make it authentic.  If a student doesn’t remember the password, I just send them into class to “go find out” from another student and then come back and tell the word to me.

Art Password Log

Keeping track of the passwords from class to class is difficult so I use a log sheet to record the password given in the prior class.