Schools

How to encourage pupils' creativity using ICT

How can you creatively combine your subject knowledge, your ICT skills and your experience to support teaching and learning?

What do we mean by creativity?

Creativity is nearly impossible to define, but we might agree that human creativity is our capacity to take what we have and use it in new ways. In other words, creativity is displayed by the application of thought to our personal experience and understanding in order to generate our unique behaviour, help us to make things in our own way, and produce innovative ideas and solutions to problems. Creativity is characterised by inventiveness and the use of imagination. The sort of creativity we can try to encourage in educational settings involves:

• thinking and behaving imaginatively
• purposeful activity
• generating something original to the individual
• outcomes which are of value in relation to the objective.

Who can we identify as creative?

Creativity isn’t confined to the young, the skillful, those with wealth or strong physiques, or any one particular group of people. Everyone is more or less creative.

Creativity can be stimulated by circumstances or events which challenge people, are thought-provoking, interesting, or demanding. Creativity comes to light when it is fostered by environmental conditions. For some people, difficulty and adversity seem to help; for others, support and encouragement are better. In schools, teachers can start with the assumption that all their pupils are likely to be creative. It is just a matter of working out how best their creativity can be channelled into, or rather support, their education in school. The constraints of the curriculum and of assessment can be seen both as barriers to creativity, or as frameworks within which it is possible.

Creativity in your classroom practice: some questions

How can you creatively combine your subject knowledge, your ICT skills and your experience to support teaching and learning?

• Can you identify areas of your subject which are hard to teach with the resources to hand? Could the use of ICT help?
• What ICT hardware, software or skills do you think you need in order to help your teaching? Could you generate a professional development plan or arrange training?
• Do you need to gain experience of what software is available?
• Do you need the opportunity to look at what others are doing, either in local schools or by looking at web-based examples of good practice?
• Can you discuss new ways of using ICT in your subject area with your colleagues, with teachers in other schools or with pupils?

The creativity of learners

A teacher’s creative use of ICT may provide a stimulating learning environment but may not directly encourage student creativity. For example, use of an electronic concordancer can be a creative way to help a student who has spelling difficulties, but this use of ICT will not allow the student to be especially creative. How can you organise the contexts in which pupils can tap into their creativity in ways which help their learning?

Social issues

The classroom environment must be conducive to creativity. You may wish to consider these questions:

• Do you feel that your pupils trust you, and each other?
• Can the pupils discuss issues and ideas with one another in a rational, effective way? Have they had training to talk and work in groups?
• Do the pupils support one another, offering positive comments and suggestions?
• Does the school’s ethos celebrate the achievement and effort of all?
• Are pupils aware of the purpose and aims of their work in class? In particular, are your aims for their creativity made explicit?

Practical considerations

Creativity with ICT depends on the combining skills, experience and imagination.

• Are pupils confident in their use of ICT? Have they had training and practice to use ICT?
• Have pupils discussed their aims for their work how they may proceed?
• Have pupils looked at stimulus material, including what others are doing, or had chance to 'ask an expert'?
• Do the pupils accept the challenge of combining their ideas and skills to create something new? Are they aware of the assessment criteria for the project? Is the challenge tailored to a range of levels at which each student can achieve?

How can we recognise creativity when learners are working with ICT?

Criteria for evaluation should be made explict to learners. Working with ICT, how far do pupils:

• demonstrate improved subject knowledge?
• demonstrate improved understanding of concepts?
• push the boundaries of convention and accepted practices?
• evaluate, analyse and reflect on the success of their outcomes?
• articulate their preferences and justify their choices convincingly?
• demonstrate an awareness of conventions and are able to justify breaking them to achieve the desired effect?
• use appropriate terminology to describe their work and their decisions?
• exploit the technology to express their ideas effectively?
• demonstrate originality in their thoughts, approaches or outputs?
• respond to the task in unpredictable ways, using a combination of intuition, logic, reason and spontaneity?
• make connections between their work in the classroom with outside experiences, influences and other learning?
• speculate about possible outcomes, envisage what effect their work might have and/or look for alternative ways of doing things?
• experiment, take risks, try things out and evaluate how successful each approach is?
• adopt a variety of flexible roles while working in groups?

Creativity is crucial if learners are to achieve their potential and work effectively in collaboration with others, and as individuals. Creativity is actually a fairly common human attribute; it falls to teachers to channel this force into educational purposes on their pupils’ behalf. ICT offers teachers and learners opportunities for creativity in all areas of the curriculum. For learners, employing creativity can generate motivation and pride in what is achieved. For teachers, creativity can help to ensure that fresh ideas and activities engage learners with curriculum subjects.

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